[3][8] A sciatic injury sustained while hillwalking in the summer before he went up, which persisted for the rest of his life, left him slightly lame and he was unable to pursue his intention of earning a rugby blue, but he became a proficient rower.

[19] Asgard was Childers's last and most famous yacht: in July 1914, he used it to smuggle a cargo of 900 Mauser Model 1871 rifles and 29,000 black powder cartridges to the Irish Volunteers movement at the fishing village of Howth, County Dublin.

[3][20] The Asgard was acquired by the Irish government as a sail training vessel in 1961, stored on dry land in the yard of Kilmainham Gaol in 1979, and is now exhibited at The National Museum of Ireland.

[28] After a three-week voyage, the company was disappointed not to see immediate action but on 26 June, while escorting a supply train of slow ox-wagons, Childers first came under fire during a three-day skirmish in defence of the column.

The seven-day journey happened to be in the company of wounded infantrymen from Cork, Ireland, and Childers noted approvingly how cheerfully loyal to Britain the men were, how resistant they were to any incitement in support of Home Rule, and how they had been let down only by the incompetence of their officers.

He had resigned his membership of the Liberal Party, and with it his hopes of a parliamentary seat, over Britain's concessions to Unionists and a further postponement of Irish self-rule;[3] he had written works critical of British policy in Ireland and in its South African possessions; above all in the Summer of 1914 he had been a member of Mary Spring Rice's committee planning to smuggle guns bought in Germany to supply the Irish Volunteers in the south of Ireland, a "largely symbolic" response to the April 1914 Ulster Volunteers' importation of rifles and ammunition in the Larne gun-running.

[39] The police and British Army's attempt to intercept the cargo as it was transferred inland led to the Bachelor's Walk massacre of 26 July 1914, when soldiers from the Kings Own Scottish Borderers fired upon uninvolved onlookers.

[42][43][44] At that stage, Childers still believed that a self-governing Ireland would take its place as a dominion within the Empire and so he was easily able to reconcile himself to the belief that fighting for Britain in defence of nations under threat from Germany was the right thing to do.

[46] Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, although hostile to spending money on armaments at the time The Riddle of the Sands was published, later gave the book the credit for persuading public opinion to fund vital measures against the German naval threat, and he was instrumental in securing Childers's recall.

[55] In July 1917, the year following the Easter Rising, Horace Plunkett asked for Childers (then a lieutenant-commander in the RNAS serving at a seaplane station at Dunkirk), to be relieved of his operational duties and assigned as secretary to prime minister David Lloyd George's Home Rule Convention.

This was an initiative, suggested by Jan Smuts who had used the tactic successfully at the culmination of the Boer War, to convene within Ireland all shades of Irish political opinion to agree a method of government.

Plunkett did not have his way, however, as Childers's writings had identified him as a partisan for Home Rule; instead he was appointed as an assistant secretary, with the role of advising the nationalist factions on procedure and presenting their case in formal terms.

[56] Talks lasted nine months and at the end Plunkett was obliged to pass on his conclusions that no agreement could be reached: the issues of devolved fiscal powers for the new government, and guarantees to Unionists of the right to nominate a percentage of members of parliament, forcing deadlock.

His reputation as an influential author gave the couple access to the political establishment, which Molly relished, but at the same time she set to work to rid Childers of his already faltering imperialism.

[67] Over the next seven years they lived comfortably in their rented flat in Chelsea, supported by Childers's salary—he had received promotion to the position of parliamentary Clerk of Petitions in 1903—his continuing writings and, not least, generous benefactions from Dr.

[80] In January 1901, Childers started work on his novel, The Riddle of the Sands,[81] but initially progress was slow;[82] it was not until winter of that year that he was able to tell Williams, in one of his regular letters, of the outline of the plot.

[88] It was an extremely influential book: Winston Churchill later credited it as a major reason that the Admiralty decided to establish naval bases at Invergordon, Rosyth on the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow in Orkney.

Training in the traditional, mounted tactics had been reestablished after the modernising reformer Field Marshal Roberts retired in 1904, when General Sir John French, who had commanded successful cavalry charges at the Battle of Elandslaagte and the relief of Kimberley, was promoted to the senior levels of the army.

[90] Childers's War and the Arme Blanche (1910) carried a foreword from Roberts, and recommended that cavalry, instead of charging the enemy positions, should "make genuinely destructive assaults upon riflemen and guns" by firing from the saddle.

[96] Childers's principal argument was an economic one: that an Irish parliament (there would be no Westminster MPs) would be responsible for making fiscal policy for the benefit of the country, and would hold "dominion" status, in the same detached way in which Canada managed its affairs.

The Manchester Guardian took issue with Childers's optimistic comparisons with other British overseas territories, warning that the manner of colonial rule over indigenous populations, effective in distant parts of the empire, would be impossible to implement in Ireland.

In his own words, delivered on 8 June 1922 while a Teachta Dála (Deputy) at the Dáil Éireann, replying to a motion of censure: "[...] by a process of moral and intellectual conviction I came away from Unionism into Nationalism and finally into Republicanism.

[108] His friend and biographer Basil Williams noticed his growing doubts about Britain's actions in South Africa while they were on campaign together: "Both of us, who came out as hide-bound Tories, began to tend towards more liberal ideas, partly from the [...] democratic company we were keeping, but chiefly, I think, from our discussions on politics and life generally.

[66] The ground was well prepared, then, when in the summer of 1908 he and his cousin Robert Barton took a holiday motor tour inspecting Horace Plunkett's agricultural co-operatives in the south and west of Ireland—areas ravaged with poverty.

[100] In a lecture delivered in Dublin in March 1912, Childers described the benefits to Ireland, and opportunities for nationalists, from the Liberal party's proposed new home rule bill (placed before the UK parliament on 11 April 1912).

[136] Childers was vehemently opposed to the final draft of the agreement, even when the clauses that required Irish leaders to take the Oath of Allegiance to the British monarch had been redefined to remove any real authority of the Crown in Ireland.

[143][144] The treaty with Britain broadened the division between Sinn Féin and the "Irregulars" a breakaway anti-treaty faction of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) led by Cathal Brugha.

[154] Early in November 1922, after his printing press had fallen down a hillside and become lost in a bog,[155] Childers decided that the cause would be better served if he were at de Valera's side as he attempted to rally the anti-treaty forces.

"[160] Childers was put on trial by a military court on the charge of possessing a small Spanish-made "Destroyer" .32 calibre semi-automatic pistol on his person in violation of the Emergency Powers Resolution.

[3] Winston Churchill, who had exerted pressure on Michael Collins and the Free State government to make the treaty work by crushing the rebellion, expressed the view that, "No man has done more harm or shown more genuine malice or endeavoured to bring a greater curse upon the common people of Ireland than this strange being, actuated by a deadly and malignant hatred for the land of his birth.