The Island of Sheep by John Buchan

2 April 2011 00:12

The Island of Sheep cover

I hope to work my way through all of Buchan’s books so when I saw this one for sale in the library I snapped it up. It’s a continuation of Richard Hannay’s adventures, a good few years on from The Thirty-Nine Steps, and the now Sir Richard Hannay is married to Mary and they have a 14 year old son called Peter John.

He’s in a very comfortable rut and living a pleasant country- gentleman’s existence when the past pops up and Hannay finds himself embroiled in another adventure with his old friend Sandy, now Lord Clanroyden. Years before whilst on another jaunt in South Africa they had taken an oath to protect the explorer and prospector Haraldsen and his descendants, they hadn’t really taken it seriously at the time but when they discovered that Haraldsen’s son was being hunted down by a nasty set of characters, they feel obliged to go to his aid.

The action moves from Buchan’s beloved Scottish border country to the Norlands and The Island of Sheep (The Faroe Islands). Another enjoyable ‘Boys Own Storybook’ sort of a romp ensues.

I enjoyed this one even more than The Thirty-Nine Steps although towards the end it does feature a whaling ship and its crew, it was a surprise to me that it was sort of frowned upon, even in 1936 when the book was published.

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Book haul

23 January 2011 00:53

You might know that I’ve been avoiding buying books recently, mainly because I’ve got so many unread books in my house. But last week I bought a few in Edinburgh and that sort of opened the floodgates.

As it was a lovely day today we took ourselves off to St Andrews and ended up (well actually we began) in the bookshops. This lot is the result.

Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
Love by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan
Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham
Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart

The book gods must have been hovering above me today. Only one Virago mind you but what a one, I love Elizabeth von Arnim. There weren’t any books by the authors that I was actually looking for, except for The Braddons by Angela Thirkell but I requested that one from the library so there wasn’t any point in buying it.

It’s just as well that I’ve got more time for reading now that we don’t have a house full of boys any more.

On to Dundee to try out Duncan’s local fish and chip shop which was very good. Then we had coffee towers from Fisher and Donaldson – so bang went the healthy diet. And bang went another Saturday too.

Well, if you’re going to fall off the wagon you might as well do it in style.

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The Power House by John Buchan

6 January 2011 00:18

It’s week one of the year and what with having been behind schedule with War and Peace I was a wee bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to complete a book from my 2011 Reading List, but I managed. Well it helped that I chose a really short book to read, The Power House is just 130 pages long. First published in 1916 this is another of the many thrillers that John Buchan seems to have written for relaxation purposes and a bit of a hobby, given that he had a very high-flying career as a diplomat and ended up being given a baronetcy.

The story is set in London and Mr Leithen (I don’t think we ever find out his first name) is a Member of Parliament. He was elected in a by-election in which he was supposed to be a forlorn hope and he is still working as a criminal lawyer part-time. Leithen discovers that one of his old friends, Pitt-Heron who happens to be very wealthy, has got mixed up with a lot of strange foreign people and what had been the billiard room in his house has been turned into a laboratory.

When Pitt-Heron bolts suddenly with a large amount of gold which he has taken from his bank, his wife Ethel is at her wits’ end and Leithen and his friend Tommy try to track her husband down for her.

Buchan obviously had a thing about being hunted down because so far every book of his which I’ve read has involved a man-hunt. This one has Leithen being chased across London with people at every turn intent on grabbing him with a view to ‘doing him in’.

This book wasn’t nearly as good as Greenmantle or even The Thirty-Nine Steps, Huntingtower, or Salute to Adventurers but it’s still worthwhile reading if you’re into classic thrillers.

John Buchan was yet another local lad, having been brought up in Kirkcaldy where his father was a minister in a church near where I live. After leaving school he went to The University of Glasgow to study Classics and went from there to Oxford.

He had a very distinguished career and became Governor General of Canada in 1935. Topically, considering that the film The King’s Speech is just about to be released, John Buchan told the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Buckingham Palace that the people of Canada would be outraged if Edward VIII married Wallis Simpson.

He was given a baronetcy in 1935 and became Lord Tweedsmuir.

I’m running out of Buchan books to read, the only one I have unread is Witch Wood.

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Salute to Adventurers by John Buchan

12 August 2010 23:47

This book was first published in 1915 and I hadn’t even heard of it before my husband pulled it out from the middle of a huge pile of books on the floor at Voltaire and Rousseau Bookshop in Glasgow.

The book was republished in 2003 by The Nautical and Aviation Company of America, they have reprinted a few other Buchan books. I think they were interested in this one because it tells the story of the colonization of Tidewater, Virginia.

Andrew Garvald, a young Scottish student was walking to Edinburgh to start his studies at the university when he has the misfortune to get lost in a heavy hill fog. Despite asking for directions from a young girl (Elspeth) he gets lost again and becomes embroiled with a religious troublemaker and his followers. A troop of the King’s Dragoons rounds them all up and they end up in gaol. As the colonies were in dire need of people it was common for any miscreants to be transported to America or Australia but Andrew escapes this fate with the help of Elspeth who manages to persuade the powers that be that Andrew had nothing to do with the religious rabble.

Andrew decides to take up business in Virginia on his uncle’s behalf when he sees how some fellow Scots have prospered there. After reaching James Town he quickly discovers that the English merchants have all business opportunities tied up and everything is price fixed by them.

The book is fairly anti-English and I did wonder if that was why it was reprinted in America, I found it amusing anyway.

Determined to succeed and overcome any prejudice, Andrew comes up against various sorts of American Indians and the book becomes a boys’ adventure story.

It does has a very similar feel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing, particularly Kidnapped and Catriona, with a young man having to fight against adversity and a lot of running around on hillsides. The only difference is that heather doesn’t feature in the American landscape and it isn’t raining all the time.

I quite enjoy an old fashioned adventure story from time to time and this one is interesting because of the different setting and history.

I started reading John Buchan because his father was a minister near where I live and so he was a bit of a local lad and his sister the writer O. Douglas was born in the town.

I had no idea that he had such a high flying career until recently and it amazes me that he had any time for writing at all.

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Huntingtower by John Buchan

20 March 2010 11:03

Huntingtower was first published in 1922 and is quite different from the other Buchans which I have read (the 39 Steps and Greenmantle.) Unusually, it has a bit of romance in it. This one is set in Scotland in he spring of 1920, starting off in Glasgow and moving on to the south-west of Scotland.

Dickson McCunn has just retired from a very successful business as a grocer in Glasgow. Having sold the business he is very well off, but with his wife having a holiday at the East Neuk Hydropathic (spa), he decides to take himself off on a walking holiday in the south-west. On his wanderings he meets a young Englishman by the name of John Heritage who has been in the First World War and is now a paper maker with hopes of writing poetry. They discover that they both have a love of literature and a friendship ensues.

Meanwhile, the Gorbals Die-Hards – a gang of five young lads from Glasgow who are known to McCunn have been given some money by a well wisher so that they can go on their idea of a Boy Scout camp. They are far too poor to be able to join the real scouts as they mainly have no parents at all or are just completely neglected.

Whilst walking through a remote coastal village McCunn and Heritage discover a mystery involving the factor of the local mansion and they uncover the fact that two women are being held captive there. One of them is Saskia, a Russian princess. (Remember that this book was written not long after the Russian Revolution.) At the time there were rumours that one of the Romanov princesses had managed to escape from Ekaterinburg. There were certainly plenty of ‘white’ Russians who had escaped to other parts of Europe including Britain.

The Gorbal Die-Hards are coincidentally camping nearby and become involved in the adventure. It’s a bit like a fairy-tale for adults really.

I enjoyed this book but I think that it might be annoying for people who find reading a Scottish dialect difficult. The Gorbals Die-Hards speak in particularly broad Scots but they are the best part of the book really. There is a very good glossary at the back of the book plus copious notes.

John Buchan had been a favourite author of the Russian royal family. His previous book Greenmantle was a great hit with them. I just wonder if they managed to take a copy of it to Siberia with them.

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Greenmantle by John Buchan

10 March 2010 00:00

Greenmantle is the sequel to The 39 Steps but there is much more to this book than the previous one. Set in 1915, Richard Hannay is recuperating at Furling country house in Hampshire after having been wounded at the Battle of Loos. He is expecting to be given command of his own battalion but when he gets a telegram from the Foreign Office, he ends up working undercover with others.

Sir Walter Bullivant has already lost his son on the same mission. When Harry Bullivant died he had 10 bullets in him but managed to say one word ‘Kasredin’ before he died. With just a few more clues Richard Hannay takes up the trail.

Going undercover as a South African Boer who hates the English, Hannay pretends to be on the side of the Germans, who are planning to stir up revolt amongst the Muslims. He is aided by three others, Peter Pienaar a South African, John S. Blenkiron an American and Sandy Arbuthnot a Scot.

First published in 1916, this book has a much more convoluted storyline than The 39 Steps. As you would expect from an adventure/spy novel which is almost 100 years old, it contains rampant racism, homophobia and sexism but this doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the story.

As you can imagine, Greenmantle was a huge bestseller during the First World War.

Given the state of the world today, nothing much seems to have changed in all that time, except we aren’t fighting Germans now.

The writer Allan Massie said ‘Maybe Greenmantle should be a set-book for our security services.’

It could only help – they need something.

An enjoyable adventure story.

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The 39 Steps by John Buchan

17 February 2010 22:45

I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages, mainly because John Buchan was a local lad, having been brought up in Fife. His father was a Free Church of Scotland minister in Kirkcaldy.

The book was first published in 1915. Buchan had been ill and had run out of reading material so decided to entertain himself by writing the sort of book which he enjoyed reading.

His main character Richard Hannay finds himself on the run from the police and whoever had murdered his neighbour who had been hiding in Hannay’s London flat.

The murder victim had warned Hannay of an assassination plot which could bring the country to the brink of war.

Hannay makes for his native Scotland with both the police and the murderers hot on his tracks. Travelling all over the country he is helped by various inhabitants but still finds himself in sticky situations.

I enjoyed reading this classic adventure book and will read the sequel Greenmantle too. Good bedtime reading, I think.

The local legend is that Buchan named the book after the 39 steps leading down to the beach at the side of Ravenscraig Castle in Kirkcaldy. Here is a photo of the steps. (There are actually more than 40. We counted.)

The 44 Steps

But like every other coastal place there are plenty of steps to choose from leading down to various parts of the beach.

The book was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, but the film is completely different from the book. The most memorable part of the film doesn’t even appear in the book – when Hannay is scrabbling about on the Forth Bridge. But who could blame Hitchcock for changing things, the bridge is a gift for a thriller.

Hitchcock definitely improved the storyline thriller-wise as the Forth Bridge is such a wonderful iconic structure that it seems a huge gaffe on Buchan’s part not to include it in the book. The bridge also featured in the 1959 film starring Kenneth More. Maybe Buchan was just a bit blasé about the bridge – as you tend to be if something is in your own back yard.

I reviewed this book as part of the Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge.

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