“John Buchan: Spy
Thriller’s Father”
Hitchens’ review of John
Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier, by Andrew Lownie. Had never heard of
Buchan, but he is evidently known as the father of the spy novel. As Hitchens
puts it “Buchan spanned the gap between Kipling and Fleming.” His book’s protagonist
is a British agent named Richard Hannay. It’s interesting that the character
(along with Buchan) is Scottish, as Fleming will later use for James Bond.
Buchan’s books mainly take place during and after WW I and he
had a real connection to some of the more interesting events of the time, “…when
put in charge of British propaganda during the First World War, he made space
for something more than a footnote in history by recommending that the American
journalist Lowell Thomas go and see T. E. Lawrence.” In the late 30's, Buchan was also the Governor General of Canada (the Queen's representative in the Canadian Government). Hitchen’s opens his essay with a quote from Hannay about the Middle East in Greenmantle, “There is a dry wind
blowing through the east, and the parched grasses wait the spark.” Prescient
and very well written. I’ll have to read some of these books.
Buchan’s most famous book is The Thirty-Nine Steps, used as the basis for the Hitchcock film in 1935. Link to YouTube excerpt from Hitchcock's The 39 Steps:
Funny lines. After leaving a crowded theater where gun fire had just broken out, a strange, beautiful woman asks Hannay on the sidewalk, "Can I go home with you?" Hannay responds' "what's the idea?"
New Learning: “One of the merits of Niall Ferguson’s recent
work on the British Empire is the reminder it provides of how Scottish that
empire was. Not only did the Scots provide a vast proportion of the soldiers
and miners and ship’s engineers of the system (I have seen it argued that
Scotty on Star Trek is a tribute to this grand tradition), but several
colonies bore a distinctly Caledonian stamp."
New word: graphomania = obsessive impulse to write
Famous example of graphomania: Jack Kerouac's On The Road scroll.
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