The 39 Steps to writing a perfect thriller by author John Buchan's grandson | Daily Mail Online comments Even now, almost 100 years after it was first published, the story retains a modernity that is little short of astonishing 'The 39 Steps, in its language, its settings, its nods to contemporary technology and its characterisation, belongs firmly to the 20th century,' said John Buchan's grandson, Toby On a late-summer’s day in 1914, a man walks with his small daughter down a rickety flight of wooden steps leading to a private beach from a house on the clifftop. The girl, just turned six, is improving her counting by determinedly calling out the number of each step. ‘Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-NINE!’ she says in triumph as they step off onto the sand. Thus Alice Buchan gave the title to her father’s, my grandfather’s, new novel, little knowing that it would prove to be one of the most enduring adventure stories ever to be published.

John Buchan wrote The 39 Steps in a few weeks towards the end of 1914, while staying with his wife and children at Broadstairs in Kent, in a house on the cliffs overlooking Stone Bay. (The house is still there; indeed, anyone wishing to re-enact the novel’s finale may rent it as a holiday let.) While there, he became ill with the duodenal problems that plagued him all his life, and which had prevented him from joining the Army, Britain having declared war against Germany on August 4 that year. Two major elements among these facts – the clifftop setting and the coming of war – infuse what has come to be widely regarded as the first modern spy thriller. Buchan posted the manuscript to Blackwood & Sons in Edinburgh, publisher not only of books but of the famous literary magazine that bore its name. ‘It has amused me to write, but whether it will amuse you to read is another matter,’ he wrote. He need not have fretted. Blackwood’s accepted it at once and published it in the magazine, in serial form and pseudonymously, between July and September 1915, and as a book under Buchan’s name in October.

It was an immediate success – and more than that, it has become a classic of its kind. Today, the principal charges levelled against the novel are that it is dated, and that it relies too heavily upon improbable circumstances or coincidences. Yet I would argue that even now, almost 100 years after it was first published, the story retains a modernity that is little short of astonishing. Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, released in 1935, is an extremely well-made comedy thriller that's widely and deservedly admired I am reminded of its place in our collective narrative by a cartoon I clipped from a newspaper a few years ago and pinned to my office wall. It shows a boy of about eight, standing in front of his parents. He is wearing a tweed Norfolk jacket, a tie, breeches, chequered shooting stockings and what are no doubt stout brogues. Eyes closed as in serious thought, he is drawing on a pipe clamped between his teeth, the bowl of which he’s holding in his left hand. In his right, half wedged beneath his arm, he holds a copy of The 39 Steps.

Anxiously, his mother is saying to her husband, ‘Why doesn’t he read Harry Potter, like other kids?’ Why indeed? True, The 39 Steps isn’t read by the young (or old) in anything like the numbers that JK Rowling’s marvellous creation attracts, but it’s still in print nearly 100 years after its first publication; indeed, it has never been out of print, something that isn’t true of the works of, for instance, Jane Austen. John Buchan has quite often been called ‘the last Victorian’, but I have always found this a somewhat lazy description, especially when applied to his writing. He was, of course, a Victorian by birth and upbringing, but he was not stuck in the past. The storyline of The 39 Steps makes free use of the technology of its age: cars and a motorbike, radio and the telephone, a fleeting reference to a semi-automatic pistol and even a monoplane, at a time when all these were rarities – new-fangled, almost certainly dangerous and, to many, arguably morally suspect. Given that Buchan was 40 by the time the novel was published, their inclusion strikes me as remarkably innovative.

It is, unsurprisingly, a novel of its time, its slang sometimes dated, its characters perhaps anachronistic (and sometimes unfairly pilloried), most of its certainties atomised for ever in the cataclysm of the Great War. Nonetheless, it is instructive to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, first published in 1912, three years before The 39 Steps. The former, fine adventure story though it is, is unquestionably a Victorian novel, owing much, as all ‘lost world’ novels must, to Sir Henry Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885). The 39 Steps, in its language, its settings, its nods to contemporary technology and its characterisation, belongs firmly to the 20th century. I’m not going to rehearse the plot and action of the novel here, not least because there’s a good chance that readers will be familiar with it already. They may remember some of the scenes: the hero, Richard Hannay, leaping from the express as it crosses the great iron railway bridge over the Forth, say, or the villain holding up his hand to show the missing finger that confirms him as the enemy.

And what grubby-minded schoolboy didn’t snigger over the scene in which the girl (a ‘topper’, and no mistake), handcuffed to the hero, slowly removes her damp stockings? John Buchan pictured in Native American headdress in 1937 Marvellous stuff – except that none of it is in the novel. These, and many other such scenes, come from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘tiresomely silly’ film, as my grandmother once described it to me. Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, released in 1935, is not tiresomely silly as a film, of course. Quite the reverse: it’s an extremely well-made comedy thriller that’s widely and deservedly admired. It was the making of Hitchcock, too, for it brought him to the attention of Hollywood; more than that, it had a profound influence, for it established the ‘chase’ or ‘pursuit’ thriller as a favoured film genre. All that said, however, what is true is that Hitchcock’s film bears about as much resemblance to Buchan’s novel as West Side Story does to a late-16th-century performance of Romeo and Juliet.

(I will allow that the book’s ending, as quietly dramatic as it is, is virtually unfilmable.) In short, as a representation of the novel’s subtleties, and especially its remarkable sense of landscape and setting, and its at times almost claustrophobic tension, the film fails signally, even while it triumphs as an entertainment in its own right. It’s an indication of the book’s enduring appeal, however, that to date three feature films and a 90-minute television adaptation have been made of it, the last in 2008 (and a fourth film has been rumoured for this year). All take considerable liberties with the text, and none quite conveys the world that Buchan created, or maintains the tension of hiding and pursuit, largely on foot, that occupies very nearly one half of the novel. Nor has any caught the boredom and stagnation that drive Hannay and cause him to feel an exultant joy in action even as he faces more and greater threats.

As he admits from the start, reflecting on his life in London, ‘The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn’t get enough exercise and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun.’ Though often frightened, sometimes desperate and for a time badly injured, Hannay never weakens. Even given everything that is at stake – Britain’s secret naval plans, at risk of capture by German spies – he continues to find the life into which he has been thrust ‘grand’. My grandfather’s characters were frequently based upon (or, more accurately, were amalgams of) people he knew, sometimes very well. Many of them died in the Great War, to his lasting sadness, among them his close friend and business partner Tommy Nelson, to whom The 39 Steps is dedicated.

Buchan's skill lies in making the unlikely not just believable, but eminently reasonable They are easy to laugh at now, these ‘clubland heroes’, stereotyped with clipped military moustaches, inextinguishable briars filled with strong shag, indestructible tweeds and stout footwear, and a habit of direct speech and, sometimes, even more direct action. Yet there is something of Keith Douglas’s poem Aristocrats about them, too: ‘How can I live among this gentle obsolescent breed of heroes, and not weep?’ The world in which my grandfather and his friends had been raised, with its established order and certainties (and not always admirable prejudices, it must be said), vanished forever in the catastrophe that overtook Europe and much of the Middle East between 1914 and 1918. And in the decades that followed their simple code of honour, courage, steadfastness, self-reliance, patriotism and courtesy came to seem outmoded, if not risible.

And what of Richard Hannay, that 37-year-old Scot who, having made his pile – ‘not one of the big ones, but good enough for me’ – as a mining engineer in Rhodesia, has returned to live in England? According to my grandfather, he was partly based on Edmund ‘Tiny’ Ironside (later Field Marshal Lord Ironside), an artillery officer who had fought and been wounded in the Second Boer War and had worked undercover by disguising himself as an Afrikaner in order to spy on the Germans in South-West Africa. (Either his disguise was insufficient or the Germans were cleverer than he had assumed, for it’s said that he was rumbled and had to leg it.) As to the improbabilities, such is the novel’s pace and atmosphere that they go largely unnoticed. Buchan declared that he set out to write a ‘shocker’ in which ‘the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible’, and he did exactly that. Besides, are they any greater than those in, say, Frederick Forsyth or Ian Fleming (both avowedly influenced by Buchan’s spy thrillers)?

Buchan’s skill lies in making the unlikely not just believable, but eminently reasonable. By the time the book was published, the trenches of the Western Front were dominating the public consciousness. The lone figure who stands between a nation’s safety and the machinations of a great power was no longer realistic. Yet it is an attractive, if romantic, idea, and in this lies much of the novel’s power. As for me, I like to picture the slight figure of my grandfather coming down the steps to the beach all those years ago, clutching my aunt Alice’s hand, abstractedly turning over in his mind the plot for a novel which was to change the spy story forever. Finally, there is a postscript to the story of Alice and her resolute counting. When, in the Forties, that area of Broadstairs was redeveloped, the old wooden steps set into the chalk cliff face were torn out and replaced. A literate builder or developer saved a piece of the 39th and sent it to our family (for John Buchan had died in 1940), a measure not only of the book’s fame, but also of the affection in which it is held.

‘The 39 Steps’ by John Buchan, special cloth-bound edition, is published by Michael O’Mara Books, priced at £9.99 The Thirty Nine Steps: John Buchan: 9781452873183: Amazon.com: Books The Thirty Nine Steps Read more Read less Best Books of 2016 Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for the best books of the year in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more. Customers also viewed these available items Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Next Special Offers and Product Promotions Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. A full cast delivers a gripping performance of John Buchan's classic tale of espionage and intrigue. When Richard Hannay discovers a dead body in his apartment, he's dragged into a dark and dangerous world of global politics, secret societies, and undercover agents.

Accused of murder and with the fate of the British fleet resting in his hands, Hannay must elude the police and foreign spies, decode a cryptic notebook, and convince the enigmatic Sir Walter Bullivant to believe his incredible tale. David Robb dazzles as Hannay, delivering a gritty, nuanced performance of a man living a nightmare, and with the addition of dramatic music and a host of pitch-perfect sound effects, this audiobook is highly enjoyable and highly recommended. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review "It is the dimension of the mysterious that makes Buchan's writing so unfailingly compelling." It is the dimension of the mysterious that makes Buchan's writing so unfailingly compelling. (John Keegan, from the introduction) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Ignite your imagination with these editor's picks from Kindle books.

See more Product Details Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; Reprint edition (May 15, 2010) Language: English Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces 5.0 out of 5 stars Can be re read indefinitely! ByA customeron August 7, 1997 An effortless adventure classic that spans the void between dime shocker and quality literature. The rapid elaboration of the plot, that is so well known that it has passed many images into popular conciousness, is still satisfying after many reads. Richard Hannay returned to England, after making his fortune in South Africa, is unwillingly ensnared in a tortured plot to assassinate Karolides the Greek premier and so plunge Europe into war. Scudder, an American journalist turned spy has coded information relating to the plot but is murdered in Hannay's luxurious flat before he can pass on the code.

Hannay, with all fingers pointing to him as the murderer escapes by Scottish express and with Scudder's coded notebook .Decamping from the train in the Sottish lowlands ( the Forth Bridge escape from the train was created with the 1935 Hitchcock film adaptation ) he is pursued across hill and dale by the police and the enemy agents intent on seizeing the notebook. In his flight he holes up in a remote wayside inn with a literary inn keeper, who can quote Kipling. It is here that he masters the code and learns Scudder's secrets. From then on it's a race to get to London and notify the authorities. One of the brilliant scenes on the way, concerns Hannay posing as road mender to evade his pursuers. To do this, Hannay explains how you must become one with the environment you're using as a cover; one of Buchans's favourite ploys and one employed in many of his novels. Hannay exchanges pursued for pursuer and tracks the agents to their escape channel and ultimately the title of the book is explained.

Every reading of this splendid and timeless novel reveals further delights that may have been missed before and even well remembered scenes take on a fresh vividness and charm. My praise may seem fulsome but after experiencing 'The Thirty Nine Steps' you too will be won over By Jordan M. Poss on May 14, 2008 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase John Buchan's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps is the prototype of the modern thriller novel, what he called a "shocker." In it, Buchan introduced Richard Hannay, the prototype of the resourceful, intelligent, and tenacious hero of the modern thriller. And while the story may not be as intricate or exciting as its descendents', The Thirty-Nine Steps still succeeds at what Buchan set out to do--entertain. The novel's story is very straightforward--Hannay, recently returned to "the Old Country" of England from a life spent in Africa, finds himself thoroughly bored with his new life in London.

After an American spy is murdered in his apartment, Hannay finds himself on the run not only from the police, who believe him to be the murderer, but from a mysterious and malevolent organization called "The Black Stone." The Black Stone has a secret it wants to keep hidden, and eliminating Hannay would help them keep their cover. From London into the Scottish countryside, pursued by detectives, sinister Germans in touring cars, and newfangled "aeroplanes," The Thirty-Nine Steps never stops moving, and even at its conclusion one barely has a chance to catch their breath. The story is so gripping I can easily see how it caught Alfred Hitchcock's attention as film material. The novel is fast-moving and short--barely 100 pages. I read this book in a few hours at a slow deskjob. If I have to find fault with any one part of the book, it's that the conclusion--indeed, the very last half-page or so--didn't make perfect sense. I had to read it twice. But that's only a small problem for this otherwise fun and exciting book.

Almost a century of imitators and innovators in the spy and espionage genres--from Ian Fleming to Tom Clancy--owe Buchan a great debt. Buchan paved the way for these later authors with shockers like The Thirty-Nine Steps and its hero, Richard Hannay. Recommended rainy-day reading. 5.0 out of 5 stars A Spymaster Who Writes Spy Novels By William Hare on December 20, 2003 It was not until recently that actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and others learned and revealed the information that John Buchan, author of "The Thirty-nine Steps" as well as the highly successful Greenmantle series, had been the head of the secretive British domestic intelligence agency which parallels the FBI in the United States, MI-5. With that knowledge it is increasingly easier to see how the Scotland-born Buchan was able to write such penetrating spy stories, which contain such a strong tone of believability. "The Thirty-nine Steps" traces the activities of Richard Hannay into the world of master spies.

This gripping first person account details how an innocent was drawn into the grimy world of espionage after an American called Scudder who lived in his Portland Place apartment building contacted him one day, telling him he was about to be assassinated by a group of master spies. When the act is accomplished Hannay becomes a sought after potential victim as the spy group fears what he might know about their enterprise. He is also pursued by police as a murder suspect in Scudder's death. Hannay, a former international mining engineer, tells adventure stories about his foreign experiences and uses common sense resourcefulness to prevent the police from arresting him as the suspected killer of Scudder and the spy masters who want him dead for what he might have learned from his former neighbor Scudder. Buchan, a former mountain climber and a distinct man of action, presents Hannay as a man much like himself, using mental and physical resourcefulness to stay out of harm's path. Scotsman Buchan presents excellent descriptions of chase sequences in the Scottish moors as Hannay hides in and steps through heather and brush, eluding those who chase him. Eventually Hannay is able to solve the case by using logic in the way of Arthur Conan Doyle's presentation of Sherlock Holmes.

Buchan was influenced by Doyle. This influence is particularly notable at the story's fascinating conclusion. Hitchcock's inventions disappear in BBC's latest version of The 39 Steps | Film | The Guardian The Observer Hitchcock's inventions disappear in BBC's latest version of The 39 Steps Mr Memory and the missing finger disappear as the BBC returns to the original plot of Buchan's classic Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive Saturday 29 November 2008 19.01 EST First published on Saturday 29 November 2008 19.01 EST Close This article is 8 years old The woman behind a new BBC film adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps is braced for complaints this Christmas from fans of previous screen portrayals of the classic adventure. Gone from her version is Mr Memory, the music hall performer cruelly shot as he reveals the secret at the core of the story; gone is the gripping scene on the Forth Bridge; gone is the villain's tell-tale missing finger joint (or rather, it is back); and gone, too, is the hero's death-defying struggle on the clockface of Big Ben.

But screenwriter Lizzie Mickery insists she has done the right thing in going back to the original plot of John Buchan's 1915 novel for her inspiration. 'People ask me, "Where are you going to have your memory man scene?",' said Mickery. 'They think they know the story, but they are not talking about the book, they are talking about the films.' The writer and actress reassures viewers that many of the key elements that have made this tale popular for more than 90 years will be there in her adaptation, to be broadcast on BBC1 on Boxing Day with Rupert Penry-Jones, the former star of Spooks, in the lead role of Richard Hannay. 'There is still a steam train chase,' she said. 'And a political hustings, and a scene with a biplane.' The puzzle of the meaning of the '39 steps' is one of the best-known riddles in English fiction, but the actual significance of the title has been lost in a succession of rival screenplays. Each film has put forward a new solution to the mystery.

'In my version Richard Hannay, the hero, has to crack a code,' revealed Mickery, who co-wrote the 2006 television thriller The State Within. 'There is a cypher and he has to find out what it all means while he is running for his life.' Mickery said she knows many people will be surprised by the exclusion of several incidents, including some in Buchan's book, but she said she has refused to be daunted by the powerful legacy of earlier versions. 'To be honest, I didn't let myself think about it. I was immediately caught up in the story and I just set off,' she said. 'I have added fun and romance, I hope, and a bit of oomph.' The best-known film version is Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, released in 1935 with Robert Donat as Hannay, our brave, accidental hero. Set in London and the Highlands, the film is still so well-loved that a recent stage show by Patrick Barlow which pokes gentle fun at it has earned rave reviews in both the West End and, now, on Broadway.

The central plot gimmick, what Hitchcock would call 'the MacGuffin', is the search for vital defence secrets by German spies, the details of which have been memorised by a music hall act. This provided a cinematic showdown for Hitchcock that Mickery finds rather unconvincing. 'If Mr Memory had all that important information in his head, you would think the spies would have done their best to get him out of the country,' she said. Hitchcock's film is set between the wars, but Mickery has taken the story back to the run-up to the First World War: 'Buchan wrote this story quickly as an entertainment when he was ill and he was talking about things that were going on at the time, like German spy rings.' The Scottish author, a future Governor-General of Canada, was recuperating from a duodenal ulcer at a house in Broadstairs where a nearby set of steps, set into the cliff, runs down from the garden to the beach. These are thought to have inspired the title, which in the book refers to the steps down to a quay where the villains' vessel, Ariadne, is waiting to speed them away.

In the 1959 remake, which starred Kenneth More as Hannay, a beautiful spy reveals she is working for British intelligence to expose a group called The Thirty-Nine Steps, an evil gang in possession of top-secret plans for a British ballistic missile project. In Don Sharp's 1978 version, with Robert Powell as Hannay, a ring of secret agents intend to assassinate the visiting Greek Prime Minister by planting a bomb inside Parliament. The Thirty-Nine Steps refers here to the number of stairs in the clock tower of Big Ben. Hannay realises the bomb is set to go off at 11.45 and manfully struggles to hold back the hands of the clock. Mickery has dispensed with the assassination attempt, which is in Buchan's original, but has kept the ring of German spies. Love interest comes in the form of Victoria, a suffragette who is 'very spunky and of her time'. Penry-Jones's Hannay is 'superb', Mickery adds. 'He is not a professional spy, like a Bond or a Jason Bourne.

The great joy of Hannay is that this is not a path he has chosen.' Historic Steps The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1915 John Buchan wrote the book while in Broadstairs. Steps down to the beach gave him his title. The 39 Steps, 1935 Hitchcock's film stars Robert Donat as Hannay, who is visited by a spy being chased by assassins after uncovering a plot to steal British plans for a silent aircraft engine. The 39 Steps, 1959 In Ralph Thomas's remake, Kenneth More is thrown into the mystery by the death of a beautiful spy who has told him of an enemy group, The 39 Steps, which has stolen plans for a British missile. The Thirty Nine Steps, 1978 Starring Robert Powell, Don Sharp's film is set in the run-up to the First World War as foreign agents plan to bomb Parliament and kill a Greek leader. The 39 Steps (1935) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This!

Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error | Mystery , Thriller | 1 August 1935 (USA) A man in London tries to help a counterespionage agent. But when the agent is killed and the man stands accused, he must go on the run to both save himself and also stop a spy ring which is trying to steal top secret information. Director: John Buchan (adapted from the novel by), Charles Bennett (adaptation) | 1 more credit » Stars: a list of 40 titles created 06 Dec 2012 a list of 46 titles created 03 Mar 2014 a list of 43 titles created 27 Mar 2014 a list of 44 titles created 27 Feb 2015 a list of 25 titles created 2 weeks ago Title: The 39 Steps (1935) 7.8/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 1 win & 1 nomination.

See more awards » Videos While traveling in continental Europe, a rich young playgirl realizes that an elderly lady seems to have disappeared from the train. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A Scotland Yard undercover detective is on the trail of a saboteur who is part of a plot to set off a bomb in London. But when the detective's cover is blown, the plot begins to unravel. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A young woman discovers her visiting uncle may not be the man he seems to be. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A man and his wife receive a clue to an imminent assassination attempt, only to learn that their daughter has been kidnapped to keep them quiet. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them? Director: Alfred Hitchcock A psychiatrist protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory. Director: Alfred Hitchcock After three British agents are assigned to assassinate a mysterious German spy during World War I, two of them become ambivalent when their duty to the mission conflicts with their consciences.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock A shy young heiress marries a charming gentleman, and soon begins to suspect he is planning to murder her. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A family vacationing in Morocco accidentally stumble on to an assassination plot and the conspirators are determined to prevent them from interfering. Director: Alfred Hitchcock On the eve of World War II, a young American reporter tries to expose enemy agents in London. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Several survivors of a torpedoed ship find themselves in the same boat with one of the men who sunk it. Director: Alfred Hitchcock A self-conscious bride is tormented by the memory of her husband's dead first wife. Director: Alfred Hitchcock Edit Storyline Richard Hannay is a Canadian visitor to London. At the end of "Mr Memory"'s show in a music hall, he meets Annabella Smith who is running away from secret agents. He accepts to hide her in his flat, but in the night she is murdered. Fearing he could be accused on the girl's murder, Hannay goes on the run to break the spy ring. Written by Claudio Sandrini <pulp99@geocities.com> It's Great...It's Grand...It's Glorious!

See more » Genres: 1 August 1935 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Les 39 marches See more » Filming Locations: Mono (British Acoustic Film Full Range Recording System: at Shepherd's Bush London) Color: Did You Know? Trivia Gaumont was determined to crack the American market with this adventure, so the company invested heavily in it. This meant importing named stars like Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll . See more » Goofs In the Music Hall scene, Donat's stand-in is clearly sitting in his place in the audience on at least two occasions. See more » Quotes [first lines] Music hall announcer : Ladies and Gentleman, with your kind attention, and permission, I have the honor of presenting to you one of the most remarkable men in the world. Heckler in Audience: How remarkable? He's sweating! See more » Frequently Asked Questions Don't be put off by its age - this one is worth seeing.

13 April 2005 | by palinurus2 (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews If what you want from a thriller is in-yer-face mugging, special effects, noise, a booming soundtrack, gore, nudity and flashy editing, this one is not for you. However if you are a more discerning moviegoer who values a great script, exquisite understated acting, wit, humour and intelligence, and you are willing to overlook the technically rough bits (come on, this was 1935, you cannot measure it by 2005 standards !!) - then enjoy, because you are in for a treat. Robert Donat is one of the most charming heroes that ever graced the screen, and but for his frail health and loathing of the Hollywood pzazz (he later refused some great movie parts offered to him, which eventually went to the likes of Erroll Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr) he might have become one of the greatest. Watch the dinner scene with the crofters, in which he manages to convey his plight to the wife entirely without words. Great acting. Also the wickedly funny bravura piece at the political rally.

Madeleine Carroll must be among the coolest and feistiest of Hitchcock's favoured blondes, not as insipid or irrelevant as many of the others were. She is a veritable icicle and it takes a long time for her to thaw, but then watch the sparks fly. I feel a little sad for the people who cannot be bothered to check out this movie because of the tinny sound or the b&w photography. Forget about those superficialities and concentrate on the real values - the script, the acting, the lighting, photography and camera work -, just allow yourself to get carried away with the fast paced action, and you'll love it. 78 of 87 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (Spy Thriller Classic) by John Buchan · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Fiction Thriller This carefully crafted ebook: "THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (Spy Thriller Classic)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. "I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.

I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick . . ." (Extract) Major-General Sir Richard Hannay is a character created by Scottish novelist John Buchan and based on Edmund Ironside, from Edinburgh, a spy during the Second Boer War. In this adventure espionage classic Richard Hannay is buttonholed by an American stranger who knows of an anarchist plot to assassinate the Greek Premier during his forthcoming visit to London. It is now up to Hannay to save the day and stop Europe from destabilising. John Buchan (1875-1940) was a Scottish novelist and historian and also served as Canada's Governor General. His 100 works include nearly thirty novels, seven collections of short stories and biographies. But, the most famous of his books were the adventure and spy thrillers and it is for these that he is now best remembered.

The 100 best novels: No 42 - The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915) | Books | The Guardian The 100 best novels: No 42 - The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915) John Buchan's espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose, is hard to put down It's all about suspense: Robert Powell in the 1978 film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Photograph: Moviestore Collection Ltd Share on Messenger Close When 39-year-old John Buchan , recuperating from a duodenal ulcer, turned to writing (in a matter of weeks) a "shocker" or "dime novel" in the first months of the first world war, he was already the admired author of more than 10 works of fiction and spoken of in literary circles as a name to watch. Indeed, Buchan might quite plausibly have become a great Scots novelist following in the footsteps of Walter Scott and RL Stevenson. Instead, with ideal timing, he wrote another kind of classic, The Thirty-Nine Steps, an archetypal English spy thriller.

Long before the outbreak of war, the English reading public had become gripped by invasion fever. This was a volatile cocktail of jingoism and xenophobia inspired by the Anglo-German naval arms race and stoked by bestsellers such as The Great War in England in 1897 by William Le Queux and the infinitely greater 1903 classic The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. Buchan, who worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau, was well-versed in this Edwardian genre and the outbreak of war across the Channel became the perfect inspiration for a topical and thrilling tale of acute jeopardy involving British secrets, German spies and the sinister plotting of the Black Stone gang, a conspiracy hellbent on fomenting a vicious global conflict. So far so (fairly) conventional. Buchan's contribution to this "dime novel" scenario was to create in his protagonist, Richard Hannay, an appealing antihero, both cool and brave, but also "pretty well disgusted with life" who, caught up in a high-octane international drama, has the resource, intelligence and daring to thwart a naked foreign attempt to drag Britain into war.

Hannay, who would feature in four more subsequent Buchan thrillers, is a mix of sleuth and action man, a cross between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. His creator was obviously influenced by Conan Doyle ( No 26 in this series ) and would, in turn, later influence Graham Greene and Ian Fleming. Buchan's other great contribution to this genre, which also owes something to Kidnapped ( No 24 in this series ) was to refine the "man on the run" yarn into a page-turning adventure. He knew exactly what he was doing, describing a "romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the border of the possible". None of this would have amounted to a hill of beans without Buchan's brisk characterisation, loving evocation of Scottish landscape and his switchblade prose. This is lethal, spare, clean and contemporary. When Hannay returns to his London flat after dinner in clubland, the reader can hardly escape the grip of Buchan's brilliant narration: "I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat." Now read on.

A note on the text The Thirty-Nine Steps, a brilliantly teasing and memorable title, was first published as a serial adventure story in Blackwood's Magazine from August to September 1915, appearing in book form that same October from the Scots publisher, William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh. The book has never been out of print and has inspired many film and television adaptations: Alfred Hitchcock's liberty-taking 1935 version , starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, a female character absent from the novel; a 1959 colour remake ; a 1978 version , with Robert Powell as Hannay, that sticks rather more faithfully to Buchan's text than Hitchcock; and finally a 2008 British television version , starring Rupert Penry-Jones. There's also a long-running West End spoof abridgement, indicating the novel's enduring appeal. Three more from John Buchan Greenmantle (1916); Mr Standfast (1919); The Island of Sheep (1936). We Tell Stories - Classics: The 39 Steps The 39 Steps by John Buchan 'My guest was lying sprawled on his back.

There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.' Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his London life - until a murder is committed in his flat, just days after the victim had warned him of an assassination plot that could bring Britain to the brink of war. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland, where he must use all his wits to stay one step ahead of the game - and warn the government before it is too late. One of the most popular adventure stories ever written, The Thirty-Nine Steps established John Buchan as the original thriller writer and inspired many other novelists and filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock. Buy 'The 39 Steps' John Buchan John Buchan was born in Perth. His father was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland; and in 1876 the family moved to Fife where in order to attend the local school the small boy had to walk six miles a day.

Later they moved again to the Gorbals in Glasgow and John Buchan went to Hutchesons' Grammar School, Glasgow University (by which time he was already publishing articles in periodicals) and Brasenose College, Oxford. His years at Oxford - 'spent peacefully in an enclave like a monastery' - nevertheless opened up yet more horizons and he published five books and many articles, won several awards including the Newdigate Prize for poetry and gained a First. His career was equally diverse and successful after university and, despite ill-health and continual pain from a duodenal ulcer, he played a prominent part in public life as a barrister and Member of Parliament, in addition to being a writer, soldier and publisher. In 1907 he married Susan Grosvenor, and the marriage was supremely happy. They had one daughter and three sons. He was created Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield in 1935 and became the fifteenth Governor-General of Canada, a position he held until his death in 1940. 'I don't think I remember anyone,' wrote G. M.

Trevelyan to his widow, 'whose death evoked a more enviable outburst of sorrow, love and admiration.' John Buchan's first success as an author came with Prester John in 1910, followed by a series of adventure thrillers, or 'shockers' as he called them, all characterized by their authentically rendered backgrounds, romantic characters, their atmosphere of expectancy and world-wide conspiracies, and the author's own enthusiasm. There are three main heroes: Richard Hannay, whose adventures are collected in The Complete Richard Hannay; Dickson McCunn, the Glaswegian provision merchant with the soul of a romantic, who features in Huntingtower, Castle Gay and The House of the Four Winds; and Sir Edward Leithen, the lawyer who tells the story of John MacNab and Sick Heart River, John Buchan's final novel. In addition, John Buchan established a reputation as an historical biographer with such works as Montrose, Oliver Cromwell and Augustus.

Question: Who wrote the classic thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps?
Answer: John Buchan