It doesn’t take long on September 26 for Carruthers to start sloughing off his London snobbery and relax into the adventure on board Dulcibella: ‘There was left a fashionable and dishevelled young man sitting in the dew and in the dark on a ridiculous portmanteau which dwarfed the yacht that was to carry it; a […]
Now that our two heroes are finally out in the field (see September 26), we’re starting to think more directly about the logistics of our own adventure. For each day in the book we need to chart where we think Carruthers & Davies are, so when we get out there in the autumn (funds allowing), […]
In which we discuss our plans to re-enact the classic spy novel ‘The Riddle of the Sands’. This week we talk about Day 4 of the adventure – September 26. Today is a day of first encounters – with Davies the yachtsman, Dulcibella the boat and with Flensburg & Germany. We discuss: a brief introduction […]
Like any sensible young gentleman, Carruthers arrives in Flensburg on September 26 with a suitcase crammed full of fashionable yachting outfits, including ‘cool white ducks’, ‘neat blue serge’ and a ‘snowy-crowned yachting cap’. That’s my outfit sorted then. Alas, he’s in for a rude awakening when he meets Davies, who would rather Carruthers made do […]
Don’t worry. We’re not going to try to explain the Schleswig-Holstein question in detail here. This is a fun blog about a great book, not a historical treatise. And we do rather subscribe to Lord Palmerston’s view: The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, […]
September the 26th is the day it happens – Carruthers meets Davies at last, and then he meets the third character in this adventure: Davies’s boat, the Dulcibella. And the location for all these encounters is Flensburg – which means this is also our first encounter with Germany. We’ll be talking about the Dulcibella and about Germany […]