Erskine Childers

Erskine Childers (1870–1922) was an English-born writer and Irish nationalist. He worked as a clerk in the House of Commons, fought in the Boer War and sailed small boats in the North Sea and Baltic, experience he put into his only novel, The Riddle of the Sands (1903), one of the first spy stories. In 1914 he ran guns to Irish nationalists in his yacht Asgard, then served in British naval intelligence during the war. He served as secretary to the Irish treaty delegation in 1921, opposed the treaty, and was executed by the Free State in 1922 after shaking hands with each member of the firing squad.