Robert Erskine Childers Robert Erskine Childers DSC ( 25 June 1870 – 24 November 1922 ) , universally known as Erskine Childers , was the author of the influential novel " The Riddle of the Sands " and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht " Asgard " . He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War . He was the son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers ; the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton ; and the father of the fourth President of Ireland , Erskine Hamilton Childers . Early life . Childers was born in Mayfair , London , the second son to Robert Caesar Childers , a translator and oriental scholar from an ecclesiastical family , and Anna Mary Henrietta , née Barton , from an Anglo - Irish landowning family of Glendalough House , Annamoe , County Wicklow with interests in France such as the winery that bears their name . When Erskine was six his father died from tuberculosis and , although seemingly healthy , Anna was confined to an isolation hospital , where she was to die six years later . The children , by this time numbering five , were sent to the Bartons at Glendalough . They were treated kindly there and Erskine came to identify himself closely with the country of Ireland , albeit at that stage from the comfortable viewpoint of the " Protestant Ascendancy " . At the recommendation of his grandfather , Canon Charles Childers , he was sent to Haileybury College . There he won an exhibition to Trinity College , Cambridge , studying the classical tripos and then law . He distinguished himself as the editor of " Cambridge Review " , a university magazine . Notwithstanding his unattractive voice and poor debating skills , he became president of the Trinity College Debating Society ( the " Magpie and Stump " society ) . Although Erskine was an admirer of his cousin Hugh Childers , a member of the Cabinet in favour of Irish home rule , he spoke vehemently against the policy in college debates . A sciatic injury sustained while hill walking in the summer before he went up , and which was to dog him for the rest of his life , had left him slightly lame and he was unable to pursue his intention of earning a rugby blue , but he became a proficient rower . Having gained his degree in law , and with the vague intention of one day following cousin Hugh into parliament as an MP , Childers sat the competitive entry examination to become a parliamentary clerk . He was successful and early in 1895 he became a junior committee clerk in the House of Commons , with the responsibility of preparing formal and legally sound bills from the proposals of the government of the day . Sailing . With many sporting ventures now closed to him because of his persisting sciatic injury , Childers was encouraged by Walter Runciman , a friend from schooldays , to take up sailing . After picking up the fundamentals of seamanship as a deckhand on Runciman ' s yacht , in 1893 he bought his own vessel , the " scrubby little yacht " " Sheila " , which he learned to sail alone on the Thames estuary . Bigger and better boats followed : by 1895 he was taking the half - deck " Marguerite " across the Channel and in 1897 there was a long cruise to the Frisian Islands , Norderney and the Baltic with his brother Henry in the thirty - foot cutter " Vixen " : a voyage he repeated in the following spring . These were the adventures he was to fictionalise in 1903 as " The Riddle of the Sands " , his most famous book . In 1903 Childers , now accompanied by his new wife Molly , was again cruising in the Frisian Islands , in " Sunbeam " , a boat he shared with William le Fanu and other friends from his university days . However his father - in - law , Dr Hamilton Osgood , had arranged for a fine 28 - ton yacht , " Asgard " , to be built for the couple as a wedding gift and " Sunbeam " was only a temporary measure while " Asgard " was being fitted out . " Asgard " was Childers ' s last , and most famous , yacht : in June 1914 he used it to smuggle a cargo of 900 elderly but serviceable Mauser Model 1871 rifles and 29 , 000 rounds of black powder cartridge ammunition to the Irish Volunteers movement at the fishing village of Howth , County Dublin ( later known as the " Howth gun - running " ) . It 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 finally becoming a static exhibit at The National Museum of Ireland in 2012 . War service . Boer War . As with most men of his social background and education , Childers was a steadfast believer in the British Empire . Indeed for an old boy of Haileybury , a school founded to train young men for colonial service in India , this outlook was almost inevitable , although he had given the matter some critical consideration . In 1898 , then , as negotiations over the voting rights of British settlers in the Boer territories of Transvaal and Orange Free State failed and the Boer War broke out , he needed little encouragement when in December Basil Williams , a colleague at Westminster and already a member of the volunteer Honourable Artillery Company , suggested that they should enlist together . It was , therefore , as an artilleryman that Childers joined the City Imperial Volunteers , something of an " ad - hoc " force comprising soldiers from different territorial regiments , but funded by City institutions and provided with the most modern equipment . He was classed as a " spare driver " , caring for a pair of horses and riding them in the ammunition supply train . The unit set off for South Africa on 2 February 1900 and here Childers ' s sailing experience was useful : most of the new volunteers , and their officers , were seasick and it largely fell to him to care for the troop ' s thirty horses . After the three - week voyage it was something of a disappointment that the HAC detachment was , initially , not used . It was not until 26 June , while escorting a supply train of slow ox - wagons , that Childers first experienced enemy fire , in three days of skirmishing in defence of the column . However it was a smartly executed defence of a beleaguered infantry regiment on 3 July that established their worth and more significant engagements followed . On 24 August Childers was evacuated from the front line , not as the result of a wound but from a type of trench foot , to hospital in Pretoria . 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 to any incitement in support of Irish home rule and how they had been let down only by the incompetence of their officers . This is a striking contrast to the attitude he was to note towards the end of the First World War when conscription in Ireland was under consideration : " . . . young men hopelessly estranged from Britain and . . . anxious to die in Ireland for Irish liberty . " After a chance meeting with his brother Henry , also suffering from a foot injury , he rejoined his unit , only for it to be despatched to England on 7 October 1900 . First World War . Childers ' s attitude to Britain ' s establishment and politics was somewhat equivocal at the start of the First World War . He had resigned his membership of the Liberal Party , and with it his hopes of winning a parliamentary seat , over concessions to Unionists and a further postponement of Irish self - rule ; he had written works critical of British policy in Ireland and in its South African possessions ; above all , in July 1914 , he had smuggled a shipment of arms bought in Germany to supply nationalists in Ireland . This knowledge was not in wide circulation , but neither was it a great secret , and the official telegram calling Childers to naval service was sent to the Dublin headquarters of the Irish Volunteers , the group to which he had made the delivery . Although in 1914 it could be argued that , in the case of war , the Irish Volunteers might fight on the side of Britain as a means of securing bargaining power in home rule negotiations , these weapons were used against British soldiers , diverted from fighting the enemy , in The Easter Rising of 1916 . Then again , Childers believed that smaller nations such as Belgium and Serbia would benefit from Britain ' s defeat of Germany and , as a prospectively independent nation , Ireland too would gain . If Childers ' s support for Britain in the fight against Germany may have been in some doubt , when in mid - August 1914 he did once again volunteer , the grant of a reserve commission in the intelligence arm of the Royal Navy was entirely to be expected : 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 . His first task was a neat reversal of his plot for " The Riddle of the Sands " : to draw up a plan for the invasion of Germany by way of the Frisian Islands . Only a few days later he found himself allocated to " HMS Engadine " , a seaplane support vessel , as an instructor in coastal navigation to newly trained pilots . He managed to extend his duties to include flying as a navigator and observer , including a sortie navigating over a familiar coastline in the Cuxhaven Raid , an inconclusive bombing attack on the Cuxhaven airship base on Christmas Day 1914 , for which he was mentioned in despatches . In 1915 he was transferred in a similar role to " HMS Ben - my - Chree " , in which he served in the Gallipoli Campaign and the eastern Mediterranean , earning himself a Distinguished Service Cross . He was sent back to London in April 1916 to receive his decoration from the king and for service in the Admiralty . This period in his life is relatively undocumented and his Irish detractors were to allege that he was once again engaged in intelligence work . In reality he was engaged in the mundane task of allocating seaplanes to their intended ships . It took Childers until autumn of that year to extricate himself and train for service with a new coastal motor - boat squadron operating in the English Channel . Irish convention . A respite from Childers ' s military career was offered on 27 July 1917 , when Sir Horace Plunkett asked that he be assigned to the secretariat of Prime Minister Lloyd George ' s Home Rule Convention initiative in Dublin Castle . The enterprise failed and , on his return to London in April 1918 , Childers found that , as a naval flyer , he had been transferred into the newly created Royal Air Force . No job was found for him until Hugh Trenchard formed his Independent Bomber Command and he was attached as a group intelligence officer to prepare navigational briefings for attacks on Berlin . The raids were forestalled by the Armistice and Childers ' s last assignment was to provide an intelligence assessment of the effects of bombing raids in Belgium . Marriage . In autumn 1903 Childers travelled to the United States as part of a reciprocal visit between the Honourable Artillery Company of London and the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts of Boston . At the end of the official visit he elected to remain and explore New England on a hired motor cycle . One day by chance the machine broke down outside the Beacon Hill home of Dr Hamilton Osgood , a prominent physician in the city . Childers diffidently knocked to borrow a spanner but , as a visitor with the celebrated HAC , he was invited in for dinner and introduced to Dr Osgood ' s younger daughter , Mary Alden ( " Molly " ) Osgood . The liberal English author and the well read republican heiress found each other congenial company . The hospitable Dr Osgood organised the rest of Childers ' s stay , with much time shared with Molly , and the pair were married at Boston ' s Trinity Church on 5 January 1904 . Childers returned to London with his new wife and resumed his position in the House of Commons . 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 . In her turn Molly developed a strong admiration for Britain , its institutions and , as she then saw it , its willingness to go to war in the interests of smaller nations against the great . 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 Osgood . Molly , despite a severe weakness in the legs following a childhood injury , took enthusiastically to sailing , first in the " Seagull " and later on many voyages in her father ' s gift , the " Asgard " . Throughout their marriage Childers wrote frequently to his wife and his letters show that the couple lived in great contentment during this time . Three sons were born : Erskine in December 1905 , Henry , who died before his first birthday , in February 1907 , and Robert Alden in December 1910 . Writing . Childers ' s first published work seems to have been some light detective stories he contributed to the " Cambridge Review " while he was editor . His first book was " In the Ranks of the C . I . V . " , an account of his experiences in the Boer War , but he wrote it without any thought of publication : while serving with the Honourable Artillery Company in southern Africa he composed many long , descriptive letters about his experiences to his two sisters , Dulcibella and Constance . They , together with Elizabeth Thompson , daughter of George Smith of the publishing house Smith , Elder and a friend of the family , edited the letters into book form . The print proofs were waiting for Childers to approve on his return from the war in October 1900 and Smith , Elder published the work in November . It was well - timed to catch the public ' s interest in the war , which continued until May 1902 , and it sold in substantial numbers . Boer War . Childers ' s colleague Basil Williams was preparing a more formal book , " The HAC in South Africa " , which was intended to be the official history of the regiment ' s part in the campaign . When Williams was recalled to Johannesburg , now as a civilian on the peace commission , the HAC approached Childers to finish the work . Collaborating with Williams by letter , Childers completed the book for publication in 1903 . " The Riddle of the Sands " . In January 1901 Childers started work on his novel , " The Riddle of the Sands " , but initially progress was slow : 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 . At the end of the following year , after a hard summer of writing , the manuscript went to Reginald Smith at Smith Elder , but in February 1903 , just as Childers was hoping to return to " The HAC in South Africa " , Smith sent back the novel , with instructions for extensive changes . With the help of his sisters , who cross - checked the new manuscript pages against the existing material , Childers produced the final version in time for publication in May 1903 . Based on his own sailing trips with his brother Henry along the German coast , it predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness . There has been much speculation about which of Childers ' s friends was the model for " Carruthers " in the novel and it seems that he is based not on Henry Childers but on yachting enthusiast Walter Runciman ; " Davies " , of course , is Childers himself . Because of " The Riddle " , Childers was invited to join the Savile Club , then a literary epicentre of London . Widely popular , the book has never gone out of print and in 2003 , a handful of centenary editions was published . The Observer has listed the book on its list of " The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time " . It has been called the first spy novel ( a claim challenged by advocates of Rudyard Kipling ' s " Kim " , published two years earlier ) , and enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I . 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 . It was also a notable influence on authors such as John Buchan and Eric Ambler . The " Cavalry Controversy " . Childers ' s neighbour , Leo Amery was editor of The Times ' s " History of the War in South Africa " , and having already persuaded Basil Williams to write volume four of the work , he used this to persuade Childers to prepare volume five . This profitable commission took up much of Childers ' s free time until publication in 1907 . It drew attention to British political and military errors and made unfavourable contrast with the tactics of the Boer guerrillas . Motivated by his expectation of war with Germany , Childers wrote two books on cavalry warfare , both strongly critical of what he saw as outmoded British tactics . All were agreed that cavalry should be trained to fight dismounted with firearms , but traditionalists wanted cavalry still to be trained as the arme blanche , charging with lance and sabre . " War and the Arme Blanche " ( 1910 ) carried a foreword from Field Marshal Roberts , and recommended that cavalry " make genuinely destructive assaults upon riflemen and guns " by firing from the saddle - Sheffield describes this tactic as " immensely difficult and generally unrewarding " and Childers ' views as " bizarre " . " German Influence on British Cavalry " ( 1911 ) was Childers ' s " intolerant " rejoinder to criticisms of " War and the Arme Blanche " made by Prussian general Friedrich von Bernhardi , writing in an unlikely alliance with British General French , who had commanded successful cavalry charges at Elandslaagte and Kimberley . Although the traditional view appears absurd with hindsight ( see , for example ) it was reestablished as Roberts retired and French and his protégé Major - General Haig rose to the top of the army . Irish Home Rule . It was as a prospective Liberal Party candidate for Parliament that Childers wrote his last major book : " The Framework for Home Rule " ( 1911 ) . 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 , to the benefit of the country , and would hold " dominion " status , in the same detached way in which the Dominion of Canada managed its affairs . His arguments were based in part on the findings of the " Childers Commission " of the 1890s that had been chaired by his cousin , Hugh Childers . Erskine Childers had consulted the Unionists of Ulster in preparing " Framework " and , somewhat naively , he wrote that their reluctance to accept the policy would easily be overcome . Although , for Childers , it represented a major change from the opinions he had previously held , Irish home rule was Liberal Party policy at the time , albeit one very unpopular with English voters : the first Home Rule Bill in 1886 had caused the Liberal Party to split , whilst the Second in 1893 had been decisively rejected by the House of Lords . Conversion . There was no single incident which was responsible for Childers ' s conversion from loyal supporter of the British Empire to extreme Irish nationalist : a nationalist so intemperate that his opposition to compromise is sometimes blamed for bringing about the Irish Civil War . Rather , there was a gradual awareness , later turning into a fanatical obsession , that the island of Ireland should have its own government . An early disillusionment with Britain ' s empire policy was his realisation that , given more patient and skilful negotiation , the Boer War could have been avoided . His friend and biographer Basil Williams noticed his growing doubts about Britain ' s actions in southern 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 . " Molly Childers , brought up in a family that traced its roots to the " Mayflower " voyage , also influenced her husband ' s outlook on the right of Britain to rule in other lands . The ground was well prepared , then , when in the summer of 1908 he and his cousin Robert Barton took a holiday motor tour inspecting agricultural co - operatives in the south and west of Ireland . " I have come back , " he wrote to Basil Williams , " finally and immutably a convert to Home Rule . . . though we both grew up steeped in the most irreconcilable sort of Unionism . " In the autumn of 1910 Childers resigned his post as Clerk of Petitions to leave himself free to join the Liberal Party , with its declared commitment to home rule , and in May 1912 he secured for himself the candidature in one of the parliamentary seats in the naval town of Devonport . As the well - known writer of " The Riddle of the Sands " , with its implied support for an expanded Royal Navy , Childers could hardly fail to win the vote whenever the next election was called . However the Liberal Party , although relying upon Home Rule MPs for its Commons majority , in response to threats from the Ulster Unionists of a civil war , began to entertain the idea of exempting some or all of Ulster from Irish self - government . Childers abandoned his candidacy and left the party . The threats of revolt were real ; disaffection among army officers who might be required to act against any rebellion was revealed by the Curragh incident in March , and the large - scale covert Larne gun - running was made in April 1914 . The organisers of the Unionists ' gun running were influential men and in the interests of political expediency they were not prosecuted . Their action succeeded in causing the introduction of an Amending Bill , exempting some or all of Ulster from Home Rule . The Liberals ' Home Rule Bill , introduced in 1912 , would eventually pass into law in 1914 , but was immediately - by a separate Act of Parliament - shelved for the duration of the Great War which had just broken out , whilst the Amending Bill to exclude the Six Counties , the duration of whose provisions still remained a matter of debate , was dropped altogether for the time being . Childers ' s response to the Larne gun - running was to organise a symbolic arms purchase on behalf of the Irish Volunteers , known as the " Howth gun - running " . In May 1914 a committee of idealistic Anglo - Irish " cultural nationalists " was set up to raise the necessary funds , with Alice Stopford Green as treasurer and Molly Childers as secretary . Roger Casement was appointed as the link with the Volunteers ' leadership and Darrell Figgis , who was able to offer introductions to various arms dealers , was co - opted at Casement ' s suggestion . At the end of May , Childers and Figgis travelled to the Hamburg arms firm of Moritz Magnus der Jüngere and bought a consignment of 1 , 500 Mauser Model 1871 rifles and 49 , 000 rounds of ammunition , for delivery at sea . On 12 July 1914 off the mouth of the River Scheldt the arms were transferred from a German tugboat to Childers ' s yacht " Asgard " and the " Kelpie " of Conor O ' Brien . Childers sailed into Howth shortly after noon on 26 July and the weapons were handed over , in a far from secret operation , to uniformed columns of Irish Volunteers . The movements of " Kelpie " had become known to the authorities and so , off the coast of Wales , O ' Brien transferred his cargo to Sir Thomas Myles in the " Chotah " . This was landed at Kilcoole , south of Dublin , under cover of darkness on 1 August . Although Childers may have intended his act as no more than a symbolic gesture , it had all too tangible consequences : the Volunteers were too numerous to allow any official intervention to succeed , but police nonetheless attempted to intercept the weapons as they were being marched towards Dublin . A small detachment from The King ' s Own Scottish Borderers was called to assist the police , but the Volunteers had dispersed , with most of the weapons . However the troops found themselves at the centre of a hostile demonstration and opened fire on the crowd : three died . Because the imminent declaration of war against Germany , just nine days away , was occupying all of Childers ' s attention , this ill - targeted official reaction did not , at the time , strengthen his nationalist resolve still further . The same could not be said of Molly , who although having previously viewed her husband ' s association with Casement ( whom she assessed as having " a streak of madness " within him ) with suspicion , was now persuaded of Britain ' s " injustice and cruelty " . Unbeknown to Childers , the Irish Volunteers organiser at Howth , Bulmer Hobson , was a founding member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood , and at Easter 1916 the Brotherhood used the " Howth Mausers " to mount the historic Easter Rising . Hobson himself did not support the rising and Casement , who had arranged to supply the rebels with a further shipload of arms from the German army , was under arrest with his consignment scuttled . The uprising was crushed in heavy fighting and was followed by a strict imposition of martial law . Childers , on temporary leave in London , was shocked by the harsh and summary punishments ( including the execution of sixteen of the leaders of the rising ) authorised by General John Maxwell , but as a serving officer he could do little . Home Rule . The violent suppression of the Easter Rising had dismayed Childers and a Westminster bill to extend military conscription to Ireland , leading to the Conscription Crisis of 1918 , angered him further : he described the proposal as " insane and criminal " . In March 1919 , after a severe attack of influenza , his doctors ordered rest in the country . Glendalough was the obvious choice and he joined his cousin Robert Barton there . Barton , however , had thrown in his lot with Sinn Féin and he introduced Childers to the underground military leader Michael Collins , who in turn introduced him to Éamon de Valera , the President of Sinn Féin . Influenced by these figures , and other uncompromising nationalists who regularly stayed at Glendalough , he finally came to believe that his moderate " dominion " proposal would not serve . At the end of his convalescence Childers returned to Molly at the Chelsea flat , but a month later he received an invitation to meet the Sinn Féin leadership in Dublin . Anticipating an offer of a major rôle , Childers hurried to Dublin but , apart from Collins , he found the Nationalist leadership wary , or even hostile . Arthur Griffith , in particular , looked on him as at best a renegade and traitor to Britain , or at worst as a British spy . The task they gave him was to join the unofficial Irish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference . This unpromising undertaking , as Childers saw it , was intended to advance the cause of Irish self - rule by reminding the various official representatives of the ideals of freedom over which Britain had gone to war . In this they were totally unsuccessful , and Childers returned once again to London . Anxious to be at the centre of events he rented a house in Dublin , but Molly was reluctant to join him : mindful of her sons ' education , and believing that she and her husband could best serve the cause by influencing opinion in London , only with resignation did she eventually give up their London home of fifteen years to settle in Dublin , at the end of 1919 . In 1919 Childers was made Director of Publicity for the First Irish Parliament . In 1920 Childers published " Military Rule in Ireland " , a strong attack on British policy . At the 1921 elections , he was elected ( unopposed ) to the Second Dáil as Sinn Féin member for the Kildare – Wicklow constituency , and published the pamphlet " Is Ireland a Danger to England ? " , which attacked the British prime minister , David Lloyd George . He became editor of the Irish Bulletin after the arrest of Desmond FitzGerald . He stood as an anti - Treaty Sinn Féin candidate at the 1922 general election but lost his seat . Civil War and death . Childers was secretary - general of the Irish delegation that negotiated the Anglo - Irish Treaty with the British government . He stayed at the delegation headquarters in Hans Place throughout the period of the negotiations , 11 October – 6 December 1921 . Childers became vehemently opposed to the final draft of the agreement , particularly the clauses that required Irish leaders to take an Oath of Allegiance to the British king . The Treaty was approved by a Dáil vote of 64 – 57 in January 1922 . In the course of the debates some felt that Childers had been insulted by Arthur Griffith , and the matter was in turn debated in June . The treaty continued to divide Sinn Féin and the IRA , and Ireland descended into civil war on 28 June 1922 . Said to be the inspiration behind the propaganda of the republican movement , Childers was hunted by National Army soldiers and had to travel secretly . The death in an ambush of Michael Collins intensified the desire of Free State authorities to exact retribution , and on 28 September 1922 the Irish Dáil introduced the Army Emergency Powers Resolution , establishing martial law powers and new capital offences for the carrying of firearms without licence . The author Frank O ' Connor was involved with Childers during the later part of the Civil war and gave a colourful picture of Childers ' s activities . Seemingly he was ostracised from the anti - treaty forces and referred to as " That bloody Englishman " due to his foreign birth . As the hunt for Childers became more urgent after the death of Collins the high command of the anti - treaty forces distanced themselves from Childers on the grounds that he was too infamous to be of any practical use , despite his considerable military experience , and at one stage he was put to work addressing letters in the staff office in Macroom , Cork . On 10 November , Childers was arrested by Free State forces at his home in Glendalough , County Wicklow , while travelling to meet De Valera . He was tried by a military court on the charge of possessing a Spanish - made " Destroyer " . 32 calibre semi - automatic pistol on his person in violation of the Emergency Powers Resolution . The pistol had been a gift from Michael Collins while the two men had been on the same side , indeed , were friends , before Collins became head of the pro - treaty Provisional Government . Childers was convicted by the military court and sentenced to death on 20 November . While his appeal against the sentence was still pending , Childers was executed on 24 November by firing squad at the Beggar ' s Bush Barracks in Dublin . He was buried at the barracks until 1923 when his body was reinterred in the republican plot of Glasnevin Cemetery . Before his execution , in a spirit of reconciliation , Childers shook hands with each of the firing squad . He also obtained a promise from his then 16 - year - old son , the future President Erskine Hamilton Childers , to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed his father ' s death warrant . His last words , spoken to them , were ( characteristically ) in the nature of a joke : " Take a step or two forward , lads . It will be easier that way . " Winston Churchill , who had actively pressured Michael Collins and the Free State government to make the treaty work by crushing the rebellion , expressed the widely held view of Childers at the time : " 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 . " Some Irish ( principally those against the treaty ) claimed Childers ' s execution was politically motivated revenge , an expedient method of halting the continuing flow of anti - British political texts for which Childers was widely credited . Eamon deValera said of him , " He died the Prince he was . Of all the men I ever met , I would say he was the noblest " . It was the express wish of Mary Childers , upon her death in 1964 , that any writings based upon the extensive and meticulous collection of papers and documents from her husband ' s in depth involvement with the Irish struggles of the 1920s , be locked away from anyone ' s eyes until 50 years after his death . Thus , in 1972 Erskine Hamilton Childers started the process of finding an official biographer . In 1974 , Andrew Boyle ( previous biographer of Brendan Bracken , Lord Reith amongst others ) was given the task of exploring the vast Childers archive , and his " official " biography of Robert Erskine Childers was finally published in 1977 . Dramatisations . In 1991 Childers was featured in Jonathan Lewis ' s TV documentary for Thames Television called " The Treaty " . Bosco Hogan played Childers , alongside Brendan Gleeson as Michael Collins . In 1998 , BBC Radio 3 broadcast in the Drama on 3 slot a play by Leigh Jackson called " A Flag Unfurled " , based on the life , times and writings of Childers . It featured Michael Maloney as Childers , Deborah Norton as his wife Mary ( Molly ) , Natascha McElhone as his sister Dulcie and Laura Hughes as his sister Constance . It was produced in Belfast by Roland Jaquarello . Late in 2011 production company Black Rock Pictures included the arrest and trial of Childers in its six - part television series " Bású na gCarad " , to be broadcast on TG4 in September 2012 . Childers is played by Dominic Frisby .