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The riddle of the title is the motive behind an apparent attempt to wreck Arthur Davies, the hero of Childers’ Edwardian thriller, in the treacherous shoal waters of the German Frisian islands. I closed the door firmly on the children, drew the bath and settled down to read.Īt once I was immersed in the pleasingly familiar plot. There was a rattle of rain on the bathroom window. Ever since the children were born it’s also been the only place in our North Norfolk home in which there is sufficient freedom from interruption to read. Not even the searching wind could mar the ecstasy of that plunge down to smooth, seductive sand, where I buried. In the depths of last winter the bathroom, if by no means warm, was the least glacial room in the house. My limbs were supple again and my head clear. Reviewed by Jim Ring in Slightly Foxed Issue 27. Tautly written and full of unexpected twists, this is a timeless work of espionage fiction.

Soon they’re on a wild journey of intrigue, meeting danger at every turn, and ultimately unraveling Germany’s secret plans to invade England. Tempted by the idea of duck shooting, Carruthers is lured by his friend Davies into a yachting expedition in the Baltic, only to discover that the itinerary involves more than killing fowl.

There are some well-handled set-pieces dotted throughout - the atmospheric journey through the fog, the hide-out in the loft, the dinner scene - and if the film doesn't perhaps excite you as it might, then it leaves you with a warm and cosy feeling afterwards, like the effect of sitting by the dying-down remnants of a roaring fire.Loosely based on the author’s own experiences, The Riddle of the Sands takes readers back to the early days of the twentieth century, when Britain shared a tense rivalry with the Kaiser’s Germany. The thriller and spy aspects, although relatively mundane by modern-day standards, are interspersed well with the rest of the story, and Jenny Agutter turns up as lovely as ever. It's well-shot throughout with an infectious charm, and as the two leads, Simon MacCorkindale and Michael York have a wonderfully deadpan chemistry.

That's beside the point: RIDDLE OF THE SANDS is a strongly visual film that conveys the joys of being free on the oceans, as well as the pleasure of a world that was a lot simpler than ours. Okay, so there isn't much story to go along with, and the story that there is is rather predictable. He calls in his upper-crust friend, Carruthers, and the two soon find themselves out of their depth and caught up in some sinister events. The story is simplicity in itself: a quintessentially British yachtsman, Arthur Davies, is exploring off the coast of Germany when he uncovers some strange activity. I thoroughly enjoyed this old-fashioned spy yarn based on a novel by Erskine Childers.