The Scottish writer John Buchan was a master of the action-adventure thriller. His classic The Thirty-Nine Steps has been filmed no less than four times, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935....
The son of a Free Church minister, Buchan was born in Perth in 1875 and read Classics at Glasgow University and Brasenose College, Oxford. After graduating he joined the colonial service in South Africa, which provided the setting for several of his novels including Prester John (1910), in which Davie Crawfurd, a young Scotsman, must prevent an uprising led by a charismatic minister claiming to be a successor to the legendary African king of the title.
Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay debuted in The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915. Informed of a plot to start a war in Europe, he is accused of murder and forced to go on the run. In the sequel, Greenmantle (1916), he makes his way across war-torn Europe to forestall a German plan to foment an Islamist uprising. Three more Hannay novels followed: Mr Standfast (1918), The Three Hostages (1924) and The Island of Sheep (1936).
In 1916 Buchan introduced a new series featuring Edward Leithen, a Scottish lawyer whose conservative politics and love of fly fishing resembled those of the author. With a tendency for introspection, Leithen is a less showy hero than Hannay but became Buchan’s most frequently recurring character. He first appeared in The Power-House, then featured in John MacNab in 1925, The Dancing Floor in 1926, and 1932’s The Gap in the Curtain, where his thoughtful narrative guides the reader through one of Buchan’s more speculative plots. Leithen’s swan song – and Buchan’s – was the posthumously published Sick Heart River (1941), which finds Leithen dying of tuberculosis in the Canadian wilderness.
On top of his prolific literary career Buchan served with the Intelligence Corps on the Western Front in 1916, and the following year became Director of Information for the British government. He was a member of parliament from 1927 until 1935, when he was appointed Governor General of Canada and ennobled as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir.
Though best known for his thrillers, Buchan wrote more than 50 books, including histories, biographies and a memoir, Memory Hold-the-Door. He died in February 1940, aged 64, after suffering a stroke at his official residence in Ottawa. While his novels have been criticised for embodying the imperialist attitudes of his day, their tense plots have ensured their enduring popularity.
