Does the world need a new biography of John Buchan? There have been three so far: a very thin and respectful one written a few years after his 1940 death, in an atmosphere of sincere grief and hagiography. Then there was Janet Adam Smith's 1965 biography, invited and facilitated by the family, which was the … Continue reading Ursula Buchan, Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps
Tag: The Thirty-Nine Steps
The glory days of Edward Leithen: John Macnab and The Gap in the Curtain
I‘ve been working on John Buchan, on and off, for about thirty years. After the first ten years I went a bit stale. I was bored with his most famous character, Richard Hannay, and with The Thirty-Nine Steps, his most famous novel. I was even more bored of people not being interested in reading anything … Continue reading The glory days of Edward Leithen: John Macnab and The Gap in the Curtain