John
Buchan Society
Sampling writing about Buchan
This page gives you the chance to read edited highlights from past issues.
Not all articles are represented, merely the ones most likely to interest
General Reader as well as Buchan Enthusiast. Follow the links below to view
the relevant article.
On Spats and Moccasins by Gillian F Barlow originally published in JBJ32 (Spring 2005) Queen's University, located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, has the good fortune of counting among its holdings many of the personal papers and library of John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. Lord Tweedsmuir was Governor-General of Canada from 1935 to 1940.
Race and the late-Victorian Imperial world-view: A Lodge in the Wilderness and Prester John by Daniel Gorman originally published in JBJ32 (Spring 2005) As a writer of both serious scholarship and what we would today call popular fiction, John Buchan's work provides an ideal sounding of late Victorian and early twentieth-century ideals.
The Friday Club by Elwin Taylor originally published in JBJ 31 (Autumn 2004) We met in the back room of an Italian restaurant off the Canonbury Road, where a steel and plate glass table was set for fifteen. Pink and yellow linen produced an ebullient, almost Mediterranean atmosphere.
The Horace Club by Michael and Isobel Haslett originally published in JBJ30 (Spring 2004) The Horace Club was founded on 15 March 1898 and met for the first time on 11 May. The founder was Arnold Ward of Balliol College. This statement will surprise readers of Buchan's biographies, with Janet Adam Smith attributing its foundation to Buchan and three friends Raymond Asquith, Cuthbert Medd and Harold Baker (Adam Smith 1985, 31), and Andrew Lownie giving the honour to Buchan alone (Lownie 1995, 48).
Adapting John Buchan A conversation with Richard Broke originally published in JBJ 29 (Autumn 2003) I was the script editor for the TV version of The Three Hostages. I had hatched an ambitious idea for doing six separate inter-war thrillers, by six different writers, taking the 'British Hero' from the smoke of battle in the Great War into the second war.
Images of Africa and Africans in the fiction of John Buchan by Olivia Coyle originally published in JBJ 29 (Autumn 2003) The activities in Africa of explorers such as Livingstone, and the discovery of diamonds in South Africa in 1867 whetted the British appetite for stories about Africa .
John Buchan and East Africa by Michael Redley originally published in JBJ 27 (Autumn 2002) John Buchan only briefly visited East Africa. He went for a few days to Lourenco Marques in Portuguese East Africa early in 1902, during his time as private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa, Lord Milner. His imagination was stirred by what he saw. He told a friend in England that it had 'a quaint flavour all of its own which I liked, and the road down is through magnificent subtropical mountain scenery' (JB to St Loe Strachey, 4 April 1902). A novel on imperial themes which he never completed was to have been set partly in Portuguese East Africa. A year later, in 1906, he located his masterly fictional colloquium on imperialism, A Lodge in the Wilderness, on an escarpment in the East Africa Protectorate, which became the Colony, and in 1963 the Republic, of Kenya.
The Vision Splendid; A synthesis of John Buchan's A Lodge in the Wilderness by Edwin Lee originally published in JBJ 27 (Autumn 2002) A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906) is a quasi-novel about an imaginary conference arranged by a multi-millionaire, Francis Carey, at a lodge, Musuru, located on the East Kenyan Plateau some 9000 feet above sea level, to discuss Empire. The conference is made up of nine men and nine women, taken from the upper and professional classes. Their views on political and social issues vary but they are all believers in Empire. The guests, drawn from contemporary figures as was conventional, express Buchan's views, and play Devil's Advocate, and reflect the views of Buchan's friends and of others with whom he had discussed the affairs of Empire and from whom he might differ in detail.
The Canadian and the Crown: How John Buchan paved the way for Vincent Massey, the first non-British governor general. by J William Galbraith originally published in JBJ 27 (Autumn 2002) Fifty years ago this month, Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born governor-general, moved into Rideau Hall. His appointment is generally considered to be the transition to Canadianising the office of the governor-general. It was, however, really only the achievement of a transition that seriously began 67 years ago, with the last governor-general before the Second World War. Mr Massey, as a well-known anglophile, was a compromise for those who doubted or mistrusted the Canadianisation of this tradition-bound office. He also happened to be close to the Liberals and had been chairman of the Liberal party during the 1930s. As governor-general, Mr Massey looked to one of his predecessors as a model, a man he had known since the 1920s. He wrote that he 'greatly admired' Lord Tweedsmuir's work as governor-general and 'learnt much from it'.
The Path of the King and an Indian artist's impression of John Buchan by John Bridle originally published in JBJ 27 (Autumn 2002) In the early months of 1920 John Buchan moved to Elsfield to begin a sustained period of writing for the next fifteen years or so. During the war he had lost friends, had been shaken by their deaths and also needed to try to recover his health from the effects of intense working during that period. A consequence as Buchan declares in Memory Hold-the-Door (1940, p206) was a 'desire to recover the sense of continuity, which had brought me to Elsfield', and which 'prompted my first serious piece of fiction, The Path of the King'. He had been developing its theme 'the notion that no man knows his ancestry, and that kingly blood may lie dormant for centuries until the appointed time' over many years. Commercially it was one of his least successful but was the start of several exciting historic adventures which gave him immense satisfaction to create as well as contributing to a steady income from writing.
The Thirty-Nine Steps first edition dustwrapper by Michael Ross originally published in JBJ 24 (Spring 2001) According to Blanchard (A32) The Thirty-Nine Steps was first published in book form on 19 October 1915 (having previously been serialised in Blackwood's Magazine, written under the pseudonym 'H. de V.', in July, August and September 1915). Both the second and third impressions were also published in 1915, so were 'hot on the heels' of the first, the second probably only weeks (or possibly even days) afterwards. Janet Adam Smith tells us that 25,000 copies were sold by the end of the year. The dustwrapper is particularly scarce as it is believed many, possibly most, copies of the first and early impressions were acquired and eagerly read by soldiers serving in France, and a fragile paper wrapper was likely to be an early casualty in those conditions.
Buchan and the Classics: school and university by Michael & Isobel Haslett originally published in JBJ 24 (Spring 2001) Buchan entered Glasgow University as a schoolboy and left it a mature young man. He always had a feeling of financial insecurity, even as a child at a period of life when most of us give no thought to tomorrow. He wrote later: 'As a child I was always in terror of being compelled to earn my bread as a clerk should my father die .... This gloomy fear I associated with some kind of English domicile, probably a London suburb. The suburbs of the metropolis, of which I knew nothing, become for me a synonym for a dreadful life of commercial drudgery without daylight or hope' (Buchan 1940, 46). There were many reasons for his early awareness of 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'. Very few middle-class families at that time were as aware of grinding poverty and the consequences of the unexpected death of young parents as the Buchans had been. Very few young men had listened to their father's sermons about 'the fleeting world' for so long. Very few had a prosperous grandfather who had been ruined by the repayment of a large sum of money after a bank failure. He was therefore eager to be financially independent and during his time at Glasgow became an author.
John Buchan at Milton Academy by Michael Redley originally published in JBJ22 (Spring 2000) Buchan did not in the end deliver the inaugural Foundation lecture. He was invited to Milton originally for the anniversary of the Armistice in 1923, but it was not a time for him to be away from Britain. He was committed to a major new educational publishing enterprise at Thomas Nelson which needed careful personal handling for much of the year. At the same time, while establishing himself in his new role as Deputy Chairman of Reuters, he had become involved in a dispute with Nelson's about his partnership in the firm which might very well have ended in litigation. He declined the Milton offer with real regret. When they pressed him again for the following year, his immediate problems being out of the way, he quickly accepted. Concerned to avoid the winter storms in the North Atlantic, he insisted that he could not stay as late as Armistice Day in November. So on Tuesday 13 October 1924, fresh from Greenslet's hospitality in Boston, Buchan arrived at Milton. On the following two days he conducted seminars for senior pupils in which he set out his personal philosophy of history.
Walter Scott, Julius Caesar, Flambard and Prince Anatole: JB at Elsfield, 1932 by David Daniell originally published in JBJ22 (Spring 2000) Now, what I want to try to do now is to watch JB, in the setting of all of this, moving from his Sir Walter Scott into the other three books, to ask if we can catch a glimpse of what made the writer about Scott go on the write about Julius Caesar, and from there into the curious Gap in the Curtain, and from there into writing a children's book about a Magic Walking Stick. To follow the stream of his mind from week to week we should be taking in his weekly journalism; he wrote the 'Notebook' in the Spectator every week throughout January, February and March, 1932. From January to April he wrote a fortnightly article for The Graphic. Throughout the year he wrote the 'Atticus' column in The Sunday Times. All of these were on a host of subjects and required a good deal of reading, and if we took them in, as well as the letters I should go on all day. As it is, I shall stay firmly with the four books.
Angela Thirkell and John Buchan by Kate Macdonald originally published in JBJ 21 (Autumn 1999). Three years later, when war has broken out, Lydia is only a little less untamed. She depends more and more on Noel, and now Noel has to vanish into the unknown on Intelligence work. ... though Noel was in his own country and among old friends, he felt that a thin sheet of glass was between him and them. There would be much in his new life that he could not share with them and a part of him that would from now on have reticences where had been used to speak very much at his ease. Then he told himself that he was being fanciful, but he knew that he wasn't, and was very glad when Lydia crashed back into the room ... "Will you vanish into the unknown like Richard Hannay and then turn up at Constantinople or somewhere?" said Lydia. (Thirkell 1941, 117) By 1949 (despite Thirkell's occasional inconsistency with characters' actions, dates and unnatural ageing), Lydia is married to Noel, with children, a Nurse and a household of her own. That hoyden is more or less tamed but her spirit lives on in the person of Grace Grantly. She, too, loudly attaches herself to stray gentlemen visitors to the house, regardless of whom they might prefer to talk to. This time Colin Keith, Lydia's brother, is the hapless visitor, interested in Grace's elder sister Eleanor.
Kipling and Buchan collaborate! originally published in JBJ 23 / Autumn 2000 Tony Wilson from Belfast sent the Journal a copy of pages from a 1947 edition of the Strand Magazine, which comprised ‘Proofs of Holy Writ’, a little-known short story by Rudyard Kipling, and a page of background explanation.
Waiting in the wings? Sir Archibald Roylance, Bart, DSO, MP by Philip Harrison originally published in JBJ21 / Autumn 1999 I gave Hannay certain companions ... and Sir Archibald Roylance, airman, ornithologist and Scots laird. It was huge fun playing with my puppets and to me they soon became very real flesh and blood. (Buchan 1940b, 195)
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