Currently on the BBC iPlayer: The 39 Steps: The Read with John Hannah
Murder, conspiracy and espionage are the themes of John Buchan’s gripping novel that sees Richard Hannay, a bored adventurer, become embroiled in a plot to assassinate a political figure.
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #thriller #The39Steps #JohnBuchan
Buchlieferung! Dann kann mein Grundstudium Polit-Thriller ja weitergehen.
“In WITCH WOOD, the Scottish Church looks for the devil everywhere but amongst its own”
Kate Armond leads us into the shadowy world of kirk & coven in Buchan’s favourite novel, WITCH WOOD
6/8
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/12/witch-wood-the-impossible-task/
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #JohnBuchan #HistoricalFiction #supernatural #witchcraft
“By the time the reader reaches the end of THE RUNAGATES CLUB, the range of fears that the stories explore, and the underlying opposition between the security of the society depicted, and the insecurity experienced by the characters when things go awry, have grown to encompass much of human experience”
Kate Macdonald exposes the lurking anxieties that drives Buchan’s tales of derring-do
5/8
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/12/the-runagates-club/
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #JohnBuchan #shortstories
“While WAVERLEY and KIDNAPPED remain literary touchstones, MIDWINTER feels like a misstep”
Greg Michaelson compares three novels of the ’45 Jacobite rebellion, by Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, & John Buchan respectively
4/8
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/12/midwinter-waverley-and-kidnapped-tangled-tales-of-the-45/
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #JohnBuchan #Jacobite #HistoricalFiction #WalterScott #robertlouisStevenson
“Tweeddale never lost its deep appeal for him, and it haunts much of his fiction”
Ursula Buchan revisits the rolling hills of her grandfather’s youth, tracing how place shaped a lifetime of writing
3/8
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/12/john-buchan-and-tweeddale/
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #JohnBuchan #Tweeddale #ScottishBorders
“Identifying the supernatural as a consistent theme of Buchan’s fiction… reinforces Buchan’s status as a pre-eminent exponent of the supernatural tale and helps us to understand his wider oeuvre”
James Machin on Buchan as a writer of the weird
2/8
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/12/john-buchan-and-the-supernatural/
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #JohnBuchan #supernatural #weird #weirdfiction
When writing the introduction to the recent collection of John Buchan’s ‘strange stories’ for the British Library, I was hesitant in making my argument that Buchan should rightfully be considered alongside better-known supernatural authors of the period. He is not usually included in that canon of late-Victorian and Edwardian weird fiction alongside M. R. James, […]
“Buchan’s tales of trust and treachery, public duty and private doubt, still have questions to ask – and answers we might not entirely expect”
THE BOTTLE IMP tracks the many paths of one of Scotland’s most surprising storytellers in his 150th year
1/8
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/12/the-reign-of-saturn/
The life of John Buchan reads like one of his adventure stories: as a storyteller and statesman, intelligence officer and international thinker, he roamed both continents and careers alike, leaping from one cliffhanger to the next. For all his public success, however, Buchan remains a curiously elusive figure. Was he the stiff Edwardian man of […]
John Buchan: A Man For Our Time?
Prof Murray Pittock discusses John Buchan – a literary legend & a man ahead of his time on issues from Scottish nationalism to the rights of indigenous peoples. Recorded at the 2025 Beyond Borders International Festival.
Available on BBC Sounds from 31 August 2025
SICK HEART RIVER, John Buchan’s final novel, completed just days before his death, was published posthumously in 1941. An adventure yarn becomes a spiritual quest in the rugged Canadian wilderness.
8/8
Assoc for Scottish Literature
Frank Böhmert