But all of them are radical departures from the plot of the novel and some seem to bear little resemblance to it. Movie makers seemed to love this book and there have been several film and television versions, beginning with that of Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. Buchan grabs the reader from the beginning in this famous "man-on-the-run" action story, and I read it recently on a long bus trip. But people remember not his historical writing or his public career, but his adventure thrillers, such as The Thirty-Nine Steps. After several careers, he ended by accepting a peerage as Lord Tweedsmuir and serving as governor-general of Canada until his death in 1940. Born the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister, Buchan won his way to Oxford, became a recognised scholar in history, and wrote about 100 books. The book, and the many films and TV adaptations of it, is The Thirty-Nine Steps.īuchan certainly did not weaken, despite being a life-long martyr to duodenal ulcers, which often laid him low and prevented him serving in the army during the war. He wrote in a novel entitled Mr Standfast: "It's a great life – if you don't weaken!" And everyone seems to have heard of the famous thriller he wrote almost exactly a century ago, just as World War I was coming to the boil. But lots of people seem to know the wry comment on life that he coined long ago. Many people look blank when I mention John Buchan.
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