Robert Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers , 1870-1922, Irish politician and author. Born into a Protestant family, he was a clerk in the House of Commons (1895-1910). Gradually becoming convinced of the need for Irish Home Rule, he resigned to work for it, engaging in gun-running for the Irish Volunteers in 1914. After serving in the British forces during World War I, he represented the Irish cause at Versailles and was a member of the Irish delegation that negotiated the treaty with Britain (1921). By this time he was opposed to anything other than republic status for Ireland and urged rejection of the treaty. He fought in the Irish Republican Army in the civil war that followed the creation of the Irish Free State, and was court-martialed and shot as a traitor in 1922. Childers wrote on Irish politics and on military matters, but his best-known work is Riddle of the Sands (1903, repr. 1971), a spy novel. His son, Erskine Hamilton Childers, 1905-74, became a naturalized Irish citizen and a member of the Dáil in 1938. He held a succession of cabinet posts in the Fianna Fáil governments from 1944 on and in 1973 was elected president of Ireland.

Bibliography: See A. Boyle The Riddle of Erskine Childers (1977).

Childers, (Robert) Erskine (1870–1922), writer and political activist, was a clerk in the House of Commons (1895–1910), served in the Boer War, and in 1921 was appointed director of publicity for the Irish Republicans. In 1922 he was court-martialled and shot by a firing squad. As a writer he is remembered for his novel The Riddle of the Sands (1903), often described as the first example of spy fiction, a sea story about two amateur British yachtsmen who discover German preparations for an invasion of England.

Childers, Erskine (1870–1922), English‐born writer and republican. Despite a career in the British civil service and armed forces, Childers became an Irish home ruler in 1908. In aid of the home rule cause he used his yacht, the Asgard, to arm the Irish Volunteers in the Howth gun‐running. He became increasingly republican and in 1919 he was appointed director of publicity for the Irish Republican Army. He was elected to the Dáil in 1921 and became its minister for propaganda. He was first secretary to the Irish delegation in the negotiations leading up to the Anglo‐Irish treaty, which he opposed. Thoroughly disliked by the Free State government he became one of the first republicans to be executed during the Irish Civil War.

Joost Augusteijn