Where do writers get their characters from? In the case of Childers, we can be pretty sure that Davies is, to a large extent, a portrait of himself. Carruthers, we think, is an almagam of several of his real-life Oxbridge and Civil Service sailing chums. Dollman is a bit harder to work out. Perhaps he’sContinue reading “‘Commander von Brüning, in command of the torpedo gunboat Blitz’”