Tag: john buchan

#TopTenTuesday The Author I’ve Read The Most Books By

whatcathyreadnext11 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday newTop Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

John BuchanThis week’s topic is Authors I’ve Read The Most Books By. Regular followers of this blog will have no trouble guessing the author I’ll be featuring. Yes, it’s John Buchan. You can find out more about my Buchan of the Month reading project here. Although most well-known as the author of the adventure story The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan wrote many other books in a variety of genres – novels, short stories, poetry and biographies.

Here are ten facts about his life and works, followed by ten of my personal favourites from his many books.

  • He was a correspondent for The Times on the Western Front in 1915
  • He was appointed Director of Intelligence in the Ministry of Information in 1918
  • His Oxfordshire country home, Elsfield, was in earlier times visited by Dr. Samuel Johnson
  • He was created Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield in 1935
  • He was appointed Governor-General of Canada the same year
  • In the above capacity, he signed Canada’s declaration of war on Germany
  • He was a friend of T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) who visited Elsfield
  • Buchan is reported to have remarked that Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps was an improvement on his book
  • His sister, Anna, was the novelist O. Douglas
  • Buchan’s memoir Memory Hold-The-Door was a favourite book of US President, John F Kennedy
John Buchan books
My John Buchan Bookcase

Ten Favourite John Buchan Books

The Power House – adventure featuring lawyer, Sir Edward Leithen

The Thirty-Nine Steps – adventure featuring Richard Hannay

Greenmantle – adventure featuring Richard Hannay

Mr. Standfast – adventure featuring Richard Hannay

Witch Wood – historical fiction set in 17th century Scotland

A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys – daring escapes and epic journeys from history

A Prince of the Captivity – globe-trotting adventure

The Blanket of the Dark – historical fiction set in the reign of Henry VIII

Memory Hold-The-Door – memoir

Sick Heart River – Buchan’s last novel, adventure featuring Sir Edward Leithen

WitchWoodSickHeartRiverGreenmantle

 

 

Buchan of the Month: Introducing… Homilies and Recreations #ReadJB2020

whatcathyreadnext

20200205_130743-1My Buchan of the Month for June is Homilies and Recreations, a collection of essays first published by Thomas Nelson & Sons in September 1926. The book was dedicated to Viscount Astor in a return gesture for his naming one of his racehorses after Buchan. A later revised edition was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1939 which omitted six of the essays but included three new ones. The latter is the edition I have so my eventual review will only cover the contents of that version.

The original edition of the book is made up of sixteen essays (see below) on a variety of topics reflecting Buchan’s wide range of interests. It includes portraits of figures such as Sir Walter Scott, Edmund Burke and Arthur Balfour as well as essays on subjects such as literature, history and poetry. Many of the essays had previously been published elsewhere or delivered as speeches to various institutions.

Having reminded myself of the definition of a homily – a public discourse on a moral or religious subject – I’ll admit I’m looking forward more to the ‘recreations’ promised in the title.

Original 1926 edition (* indicates also in 1939 edition)

*Some Notes on Sir Walter Scott – Paper read to the English Association on 26 October 1923
*The Old and the New in Literature – Paper read to the Royal Society of Literature on 26 January 1925
The Great Captains
The Muse of History
A Note on Edmund Burke
*Lord Balfour and English Thought – Revised version of article first published in The Times Literary Supplement on 7 May 1914
*Two Ordeals of Democracy – Address delivered on the Alumni War Memorial Foundation at Milton Academy, Massachusetts on 16th October 1924
*Literature and Topography – Address to the Working Men’s College, London on 20 February 1926
The Judicial Temperament
*Style and Journalism – Address delivered to the School of Journalism in King’s College, London on 19th May 1925
Certain Poets:
– *Scots Vernacular Poetry – Introduction to The Northern Muse: An Anthology of Scots Vernacular Poetry, published by Nelson in 1924
– *Morris and Rossetti
– *Robert Burns – Speech to the Edinburgh Burns Club on 25 January 1924
– Catullus
The Literature of Tweeddale – Included in A History of Peebleshire by Walter Buchan, 1925
*Thoughts on a Distant Prospect of Oxford – First published in Blackwood’s Magazine in October 1923

In 1939 edition only:

The Victorian Chancellors – First appeared in Some Eighteenth Century Byways, 1908
The Novel and the Fairy Tale – Presidential address delivered to the Scottish Branch of the English Association on 22 November 1930
The Interpreter’s House – Chancellor’s Installation Address delivered before the University of Edinburgh on 20 July 1938

Sources:

Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography (OUP, 1985 [1965])
Kenneth Hillier and Michael Ross, The First Editions of John Buchan: A Collector’s Illustrated Biography (Avonworld, 2008)
Andrew Lownie, John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier (Constable, 1995)