Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps
By Ursula Buchan,
Bloomsbury, 492pp, £25/$28
John Buchan (1875-1940) has proved more enduring than most of his contemporaries. His books, especially The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, are literary heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next. He has been lucky in his biographers, as he was in most things with the exception of his health.
After two excellent biographies by Janet Adam Smith and Andrew Lownie, published respectively in 1965 and 1994, and several memoirs, Buchanites can now welcome Ursula Buchan’s life of the grandfather who died before she was born.
