Author: Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers (1879-1922) was the son of the great Orientalist Robert Caesar Childers. He served in the Boer War and as a naval intelligence officer in the 1914 -18 war. Although he was a Protestant, he become convinced of the need for Irish Home Rule, and from 1908 he devoted himself to this cause and joined the Irish Republican Army. He was captured in the Irish Civil War, was court-martial and shot as a traitor. His son, Erskine Hamilton Childers in 1973 was elected President of Ireland.
