Review - The Riddle of the Sands

First, a word on the edition. Pengin, 1950s green and white cover and a design classic. Why Penguin ever decided to stop doing their book covers like this is a mystery worthy of a green and white (‘mystery and crime’) cover itself. Recently, Penguin have returned to this format but, for the longest time, their covers were adorned by details from forgettable paintings, usually dour virgins in bonnets looking constipated. This edition I picked up second hand for a couple of quid and, to be frank, it is falling apart but it has obviously served time riding in the jacket pocket of chaps and blokes who have, at various times, waited in train stations, outside the headmaster’s office, outside the maternity ward and sat on beaches and in pubs, in foreign bars and lonely hotel rooms. If I were in a tight spot, this is the book I would choose to have with me.

It’s a story about chaps. And boats. And rotters. And mud, lots of mud. By Christ there’s a lot of mud. Riddle of the mud would be closer to the truth, but finishing it I wanted to jump in a small boat and lose myself in a big sea.

Originally published over 100 years ago, it’s a story that has certain aspects absolutely fixed in the Victorian age, and others that are as fresh as rockpool whelk. The opening is a splendid description of a chap left behind in London when all of his friends have gone on holiday, it’s sort of a ’28 days later’ for the upper classes; London is inhabited only by chaps like our hero, held behind on business, and the servants who cater for their every whim. Hellish. During August, one understands, one is expected to be busy depopulating grouse moors rather than attending to the business of Government.

All this changes with the arrival of a telegram summoning our chap abroad. I won’t rehash the plot but it involves sailing, the discovery of a fiendish plot, and the thwarting of same. There’s even a love interest.

The love interest I really, really enjoyed. While today it is quite the done thing to post compromising images of one’s lady friends on the internet, back then chaps did not talk about their feelings, even with their wives. Such ‘artistic’ behaviour was the preserve of beastly types and foreigners. The chaps in the novel smoke cigars but, I swear to God, every time one or the other mentions the object of affection, the effect of the prose is to convey that the other bites down on his pipe stem hard enough to bite off a chunk. And he’s not even smoking a pipe!

Other aspects of the novel are bang up to date. Truth is, man’s elemental struggle with the sea hasn’t changed much over the millennia. At the end of the day, all the gizmo’s in the world will not help you when the seas are mountainous, the wind and unforgiving shriek and dry land is a long, long way off. While the talented sailor of our two chaps never really admits to it, one senses that during the passage where he is in a bit of tight spot, his reaction would probably not be to blub into his diary cam; no, instead he swears revenge on the rotter who nearly led him to his doom.

The great thing about the book is that you ostensibly have a couple of talented amateurs who crack a vile plot. However, throughout the novel I could not help but think that there was more to them than was revealed. Would you really just telegram a chum you had not seen in years to come on a sailing holiday with you? The sailing chap of the novel seems very, very well equipped, intellectually and morally. One cannot but feel that he is secret service, exploiting his foreign office chum.

Such suspicions are left unanswered. What is apparent is that this is a novel that strongly conveys a sense of place; from the almost Woosterish atmosphere of the opening pages to the bleak mud (sorry, sand) flats of the German coast. All this and skulduggery too!