John Buchan
As well as a writer John Buchan was a published historian, lawyer, editor, war correspondent, government administrator, MP and director of a successful publishing house. He was born, the first son to a Free-Church minister and his wife Helen Jane Masterson, in 1875. Raised in the village of Pathhead on the Fife coast, he attended school in nearby Kirkcaldy until 1888, when the family left Fife for Glasgow where his father took up a new ministry.
Aged seventeen Buchan obtained a scholarship to study classics and mathematics at Glasgow University but he was a solitary youth and financial constraints prevented him from socialising widely. A second scholarship enabled Buchan to continue his studies at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he eventually graduated with a Doctor of Laws. During this time he wrote prodigiously and several of his stories and essays were published.
During his writing career he is thought to have published some one hundred books, only forty or so of which are fiction. Buchan was a huge admirer of the writing of Sir Walter Scott, whose Romantic influence marks the adventure stories, ‘where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible,’ for which he was best known. However, he regarded writing as an inferior career and sought to make his name in the wider arena of British, imperial politics.
Upon graduating, Buchan pursued a successful career as a barrister and later as private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa, Lord Milner, between 1901 and 1903. He married Susan Grosvenor in 1907 and was to become father to four children. In 1909 Buchan began work for the publisher Thomas Nelson and Sons during which he spent a great deal of time writing for and editing the The Spectator Newspaper.
During the war Buchan worked as a war correspondent for The Times newspaper before joining the army, and his most famous thriller, The Thirty Nine Steps (1915), which introduced the spy-catching character Richard Hannay, was based on a real-life character from Buchan’s own time serving with the British army. He served on the Headquarters Staff of the British Army in France as temporary Lieutenant Colonel (1916-17). Buchan was made Director of Information (1917-18) and, briefly, Director of Intelligence, under the Lloyd George administration. After the war Buchan became a director of the news agency Reuters.
From 1927-35 Buchan was Conservative MP for the Scottish universities. He had then a number of important government posts, serving among others as Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland (1933-34). 1n 1935 Buchan moved to Canada where he became Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield and the thirty fifth Governor General of Canada- a position he held until his death in 1940.
Many thanks to Growler, Bob Hamish and Ron for contributions to this page.
The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
John Buchan wrote "The Thirty-Nine Steps" while he was seriously ill at the beginning of World War I. In it, he introduces his most famous hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an "ordinary fellow", is caught up in the dramatic race against a plot to devastate the British war effort. Hannay is hunted across the Scottish moors by police and a pitiless enemy in the corridors of Whitehall and, finally, at the site of th mysterious 39 steps. The best-known of Buchan's thrillers, this novel has been continuously in print since first publication and has been filmed three times. In this critical edition, Christopher Harvie's introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold and, via "The Thirty-Nine Steps", ended the war as spymaster and propaganda chief. (Two versions available: the original version with David Rintoul, as a single file or three seperate files and the more recent 2 part adaptation by Bert Coules)
Greenmantle (1916)
This novel continues the story of Richard Hannay, taking him from convalescence following the Battle of Loos, back to London for a vital meeting at the Foreign Office, and thence on a top-secret mission across war-torn German-occupied Europe.
Mr Standfast (1919)
Set in the later years of World War I, Brigadier-General Hannay is recalled from active service on the Western Front to undertake a secret mission hunting for a dangerous German agent at large in Britain. He is forced to work undercover disguised as a pacifist, roaming the country incognito to investigate the deadly spy and his agents, and then heads to the Swiss Alps to save Europe from being overwhelmed by the German army.
Huntingtower (1922)
Dickson McCunn, a respectable, newly-retired grocer, plans a modest walking holiday in the hills of south-west Scotland. He meets a young English poet and finds himself in the thick of a plot involving the kidnapping of a Russian princess, prisoner in the rambling mansion, Huntingtower.
The Three Hostages (1924)
At the end of World War I, Richard Hannay, has retired to the Cotswolds. There, news comes to him of three kidnappings and a plot of political and financial magnitude. Hannay abandons his idyll to counter the threat and his adventures lead to an encounter with his most formidable enemy.
Witch Wood (1927)
Set amidst the religious struggles of the 17th century, this is the story of a young minister's return to the town of his birth. There he finds a coven of Satan worshippers and falls deeply in love with one of their victims in a struggle for right and wrong.
The Courts of Morning (1929)
When Richard Hannay is approached by the American military attach in London to carry out a delicate undercover mission, he immediately seeks out his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot. They meet at Sandy's country house in the Scottish Borders, but soon afterwards Sandy disappears in mysterious circumstances. As it turns out, these events are only the prelude to a dramatic series of adventures which take place against the backdrop of a small South American Republic that has fallen under the spell of a ruthless Dictator.
The Dictator is a powerful and charismatic leader, but he is also the mastermind behind a sinister international conspiracy that threatens the peace and security of the entire world. He has to be stopped, and Sandy Arbuthnot, master of disguise and born adventurer, is the man to do it, though revolution and war may be the price that has to be paid.
The Island of Sheep (1936) (R)
First published in 1936, The Island of Sheep (or The Man from the Norlands as it is known in the USA) was the fifth and last of John Buchan's 'shockers' featuring Richard Hannay. It was indeed the author's second-last work of fiction, and the last to be published during his lifetime. Like Hannay's previous outing, The Three Hostages (1924), the action of the novel takes place mainly in Britain, but its climax takes us to the Island of Sheep of the title, situated in the Norlands, the author's fictional equivalent of the Faeroes (Buchan had spent a fortnight there with his son Johnnie the summer before writing the book). The story revolves around a long-forgotten promise made by Hannay in his days as a mining engineer in South Africa. He had sworn to defend the interests of Marius Haraldsen, a wealthy Danish gold-prospector and expert in Norse lore, against a group of unscrupulous former business associates and assorted desperados. Hannay, Pienaar and fellow Englishman Lombard join Haraldsen at his camp on a Rhodesian plateau, and in a scene worthy of Rider Haggard, they beat off an attack on their hill-top redoubt with timely help from local tribesmen. However, that is not the end of the matter. Some thirty years later, with Haraldsen now dead, Albinus, the surviving member of the original gang and Troth, the son of one of the others, decide to take the vendetta to the next generation. Gathering around them a new group of ne'er-do-wells, including Barralty, a rootless and highly ambitious intellectual (a sketchy re-working of Dominick Medina from The Three Hostages), together with D'Ingraville and two of his Olifa henchmen, they seek to extort Haraldsen's son Valdemar out of his substantial fortune.
The Dictator is a powerful and charismatic leader, but he is also the mastermind behind a sinister international conspiracy that threatens the peace and security of the entire world. He has to be stopped, and Sandy Arbuthnot, master of disguise and born adventurer, is the man to do it, though revolution and war may be the price that has to be paid.
First published in 1936, The Island of Sheep (or The Man from the Norlands as it is known in the USA) was the fifth and last of John Buchan's 'shockers' featuring Richard Hannay. It was indeed the author's second-last work of fiction, and the last to be published during his lifetime. Like Hannay's previous outing, The Three Hostages (1924), the action of the novel takes place mainly in Britain, but its climax takes us to the Island of Sheep of the title, situated in the Norlands, the author's fictional equivalent of the Faeroes (Buchan had spent a fortnight there with his son Johnnie the summer before writing the book). The story revolves around a long-forgotten promise made by Hannay in his days as a mining engineer in South Africa. He had sworn to defend the interests of Marius Haraldsen, a wealthy Danish gold-prospector and expert in Norse lore, against a group of unscrupulous former business associates and assorted desperados. Hannay, Pienaar and fellow Englishman Lombard join Haraldsen at his camp on a Rhodesian plateau, and in a scene worthy of Rider Haggard, they beat off an attack on their hill-top redoubt with timely help from local tribesmen. However, that is not the end of the matter. Some thirty years later, with Haraldsen now dead, Albinus, the surviving member of the original gang and Troth, the son of one of the others, decide to take the vendetta to the next generation. Gathering around them a new group of ne'er-do-wells, including Barralty, a rootless and highly ambitious intellectual (a sketchy re-working of Dominick Medina from The Three Hostages), together with D'Ingraville and two of his Olifa henchmen, they seek to extort Haraldsen's son Valdemar out of his substantial fortune.
Sick Heart River (U.S title Mountain Meadow) (1941)
Sir Edward Leithen travels deep into the Canadian Arctic to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a man. Leithen confronts his fears during this dangerous mission as he draws closer to the deadly secret of the Sick Heart River.
