John Buchan was a historian, politician and novelist. He was mostly know for writing jungle adventures and books based on historical subjects. His career as a writer took a turn for the better when he wrote what he called his first "shocker." It was the Thirty-nine Steps. The first of five novels to star his adventure Richard Hannay. The title came from his daughter. She was young and beginning to learn to count and counted the stairs at the place where her father was healing from an illness. She proudly announced that there were 39 steps.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It is the rst of ve novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations. The Thirty-Nine Steps is one of the earliest examples of the 'man-on-the-run' thriller archetype subsequently adopted by Hollywood as an often- used plot device. In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Buchan holds up Richard Hannay as an example to his readers of an ordinary man who puts his country's interests before his own safety. The story was a great success...

Greenmantle is the second of ve novels by John Buchan featuring the character of Richard Hannay, rst published in 1916 by Hodder & Stoughton, London. In Greenmantle (1916) Richard Hannay, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, travels across war- torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic Messiah. He is joined by three more of Buchan's heroes: Peter Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron, the American determined to ght the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot, Greenmantle himself, modelled on Lawrence of Arabia. The intrepid four move in disguise through Germany to Constantinople and the...

The Path of the King is a 1921 novel by the Scottish author John Buchan, presented as a loosely-coupled series of short stories. In a prologue to the novel, three men discuss around a camp re the notion that the 'spark' of masterful men may be transmitted down from generation to generation, and even though it may smoulder for generations and may seem lost, will reappear and are up when the time is right. In in the rst episode, a Northern prince's golden -torque- represents the symbol of his royal status. On his death, the gold is remodelled as a ring which is handed down from generation to...

Huntingtower is a novel written by John Buchan in 1922. The rst of his three Dickson McCunn books, it is set near Carrick in south-west Scotland around 1920. The hero is a 55-year-old grocer Dickson McCunn, who has sold his business and taken early retirement. As soon as he ventures out to explore the world, he is swept out of his bourgeois rut into bizarre and outlandish adventures, and forced to become a reluctant hero. The story revolves around the imprisonment under false pretenses by Bolshevik agents of an exiled Russian noblewoman. The Scottish local community mobilises to uncover and...

The Half-Hearted is a 1900 novel of romance and adventure by the Scottish author John Buchan, in which the social expectations of the main characters shape the paths they must tread. The novel follows the life of Lewis Haystoun, a young Scottish laird, who nds himself unable to commit wholeheartedly to any course of action. His failure to seize the opportunity results in the woman he loves agreeing to marry a rival. Determined to face up to what he considers to be his cowardice, Haystoun departs for the Empire's north west frontier where he dies attempting to hold a narrow mountain pass...

Salute to Adventurers is a 1915 novel by John Buchan. John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875-1940), was a Scottish novelist and a Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada. Buchan at rst entered into a career in law in 1901, but almost immediately moved into politics, becoming private secretary to British colonial administrator Alfred Milner, who was high commissioner for South Africa, Governor of Cape Colony and colonial administrator of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Born in Perth, Scotland, Buchan was admitted to the University of Glasgow in 1892 to study...

Prester John is a 1910 adventure novel by John Buchan. It tells the story of a young Scotsman named David Crawfurd and his adventures in South Africa, where a Zulu uprising is tied to the medieval legend of Prester John. The setting is contemporaneous with publication: the beginning of the twentieth century. Crawfurd grows up in Kirkcaple, by the North Sea, where he rst encounters the antagonist, Laputa, performing a ritual on the beach. Crawfurd's father dies, and he goes to work as a shopkeeper in a place called Blaauwildebeestefontein. Crawfurd comes into contact with a Portuguese man,...

Mr Standfast is the third of the Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan, first published in 1919 by Hodder & Stoughton, London. It is one of two Hannay novels set during the First World War, the other being Greenmantle (1916); Hannay's first and best-known adventure, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), is set in the period immediately before the war started. The title refers to a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, to which there are many other references in the novel; Hannay uses a copy of Pilgrim's Progress to decipher coded messages from his contacts, and letters from his friend Peter...

John Buchan's classic collection of dark and fanciful short stories and poetry contains such classics as -The Grove of Ashtaroth, - -The Riding of Ninemileburn, - -The Company of the Marjolaine, - and -The Rime of True Thomas.- John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH PC (1875 - 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation. After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the colonial...