IN 1914, convalescing after sickness arising from a duodenal ulcer, a restless John Buchan amused himself by writing a thriller. He had enjoyed success the previous year with the serialisation of a similar work, The Power House (published in book form in 1916), but the response to The Thirty-Nine Steps was immediate.
Described by its author as a ‘shocker’ in which ‘the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible’, within three months of publication in 1915 sales had raced past 25,000 copies. Buchan had already written the well-received adventure novel Prester John (1910), as well as history books and short stories, but The Thirty-Nine Steps, never subsequently out of print, ensured his lasting fame.
With due respect to Erskine Childers’s pioneering, but more ponderous espionage tale The Riddle of the Sands (1903), Buchan’s short and snappy offering was the forerunner of the fast-paced modern adventure thriller, with rapidly changing scenes and situations and an unnerving sense that no one is quite what they seemed on the surface. Tapping into the age’s paranoia about German spies, as, indeed, Childers and lesser adventure writers, such as William le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim, had done, the release of the book was also timely, coming shortly after the start of the First World War.
Buchan’s approach was simple. A tale unfolds in 10 chapters, each one a gripper, around the adventures of free-spirited mining engineer Richard Hannay, back from the Rhodesian veldt where he made his ‘pile’ and restless in London.
Esta historia es de la edición February 02, 2022 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición February 02, 2022 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.