The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978) - IMDb (South Wales, UK) – See all my reviews I read one contribution here stating quite correctly that this is not a remake of the Hitchcock film, it is an entirely different treatment of the John Buchan book. Where I thoroughly disagree with that reviewer though is in his comment that some parts of the Hitchcock film were 'stodgy', "particularly the crofter scene"! How he could say that is beyond belief. The crofter scene is BRILLIANT! It involves fantastic acting from all 3 in the scene (including a young John Laurie from Dad's Army) who convey amazing thoughts and emotions without dialogue simply with their eyes and small gestures. It is pure cinema and pure genius as is the rest of that film. The Hitchcock version is light years better than this as a film (near perfect actually) but is only loosely based on a few ideas from the Buchan novel. This is more close to the novel but still strays from its source, wrongly so in this case. The novel is very good but this film drags and is quite poorly directed. It loses most suspense or interest and is very disappointing, I think.

5 of 7 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes 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 John Buchan (Author of The 39 Steps) edit data John Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) was a Scottish novelist and public servant who combined a successful career as an author of thrillers, historical novels, histories and biographies with a parallel career in public life. At the time of his death he was Governor-General of Canada. Buchan was educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to South Africa in 1902 where he contributed to the reconstruction of the country following the Boer War. His love for South Africa is a recurring theme in his fiction. On returning to Britain, Buchan built a successful career in publishing with Nelsons and Reuters. During the first world war, he was Director of Information in the British government. He wrote a twenty-four v John Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) was a Scottish novelist and public servant who combined a successful career as an author of thrillers, historical novels, histories and biographies with a parallel career in public life.

At the time of his death he was Governor-General of Canada. Buchan was educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to South Africa in 1902 where he contributed to the reconstruction of the country following the Boer War. His love for South Africa is a recurring theme in his fiction. On returning to Britain, Buchan built a successful career in publishing with Nelsons and Reuters. During the first world war, he was Director of Information in the British government. He wrote a twenty-four volume history of the war, which was later abridged. Alongside his busy public life, Buchan wrote superb action novels, including the spy-catching adventures of Richard Hannay, whose exploits are described in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages, and The Island of Sheep. Apart from Hannay, Buchan created two other leading characters in Dickson McCunn, the shrewd retired grocer who appears in Huntingtower, Castle Gay, and The House of the Four Winds; and the lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, who features in the The Power-House, John Macnab, The Dancing Floor, The Gap in the Curtain and Sick Heart River.

From 1927 to 1935 Buchan was Conservative M.P. for the Scottish Universities, and in 1935, on his appointment as Governor-General to Canada, he was made a peer, taking the title Baron Tweedsmuir. During these years he was still productive as a writer, and published notable historical biographies, such as Montrose, Sir Walter Scott, and Cromwell. When he died in Montreal in 1940, the world lost a fine statesman and story-teller. The John Buchan Society was founded in 1979 to encourage continuing interest in his life, works and legacy. Visit the website ( ) and follow the Society on Twitter ( ) and Facebook ( ). See also and Encyclopeadia Britannica Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. ...more The 39 Steps: John Buchan: 9781500911133: Amazon.com: Books By James G. Bruen Jr.

on July 13, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase This is a World War I era spy/adventure/mystery/thriller story written as part of the British government's propaganda efforts, in which most prominent British writers were enlisted. It's full of British "good old chaps" who instantly trust and aid each other despite wild tales and incongruities. The villains, of course, are German. Amazing coincidences abound to further the story. How the Germans got most of their knowledge and perpetrated their deeds remains unexplained when the book has ended. How did they locate Scudder to kill him? How did they track and then anticipate the movements of Hannay (yes, I know they had an aeroplane, but that's not saying enough). Most of the book is a bit of a travelogue with Hannay fleeing the Germans through Scotland (Buchan was a Scot) without really knowing who they are or what they are up to. Of course the British commoners thwart the seemingly invincible German intelligence agents. Perhaps innovative when it was written, but now best read as a period piece.

By Suzanne Moore on March 11, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase This spy novella, originally published in 1915, was chosen for our town's first centennial read. I presume the author was influenced by the impending WWI as he crafted this adventure story. Richard Hannay the main character has to take to the run when a stranger (Scudder) he offers shelter to ends up stabbed to death in his apartment. Before Scudder meets his demise, he shares a political secret ... planned assassination of a Greek ambassador ... that could trigger a world war. Richard realizes that he could be arrested for the murder of Scudder, but he also realizes that he is probably now going to be tracked by "bad guys" for the secrets he carries. Scudder left behind a code of some sort that Richard has to decipher in order to clear his name and stop the political assassination from taking place. The book follows his escape through the hills of Scotland and had me deciphering dialect while Richard worked on the puzzle of Scudder's code. While Richard is being pursued, he becomes a master of disguise beginning with his initial escape as a milkman.

I liked the quote where in the end when he begins to uncover the mystery of Scudder's murder ... "A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different." Also "the 39 steps" is part of the code ... pretty good sleuthing in the end. Although things wrapped up rather abruptly ... justice was served. By Charles Kovacs on April 10, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase This is a classic spy story and was a best seller in its time and may be said to have made John Buchan's fortune. The story takes place in England and Scotland just before the start of World War I. Readers acquainted with the time and place will find the setting familiar, both geographically and socially. For the others, this is an excellent introduction and tutorial to the period, all in an amusing and easy to read slim book. The villains are of course the Germans, but even they are almost gentlemen and it's not their fault that they are not English. The protagonist is a James Bond of his time, but without the gadgets and no sex; it's all just a matter of brain and some brawn.

A "colonial," the protagonist has a fairly low opinion of his home country, and even a lower one of foreigners, except of course the rural Scots. The boo is definitely not pc, and for those not offended by this, this book is a must. It is surprisingly compelling and the price is certainly right. By Amazon Customer on May 25, 2016 Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase During a lot of parts of Hannay's thoughts in-side of the book and in reconstructing his thoughts to him self about the 39 steps was one part in particular that 'I' liked well as his mind began to grow back again to another bar of 'Annie Laurie; to the sound of 'Twisdon's as some kind of resemblance to the beauty of a black stone, the name isn't it,?' / And about Trafalgar Lodge the movie say's it's inside of the London Palladium. / And the movie also says that it was a woman that was skewered surprisingly with a kitchen knife in the back.

When the book says that Hannay's imagination led us to believe that he had came back 4 hours past 10 and skewered the body of Scudder and then dressed Scudder into Richard Hannay's own pajamas when shooting him in the head as for Scudder was one of the guards men and the porter inside of Hannay's flat that was in-side of the new block behind Langham Place. Does this book relate to The Skin Game in 1916 (or) by any chance also the book Sabotage in 1914?? "I" enjoyed the book very much so that "I" could say that "I" loved the book, Thank You Kindly, MJQ Los Angles California. By Amazon Customer on January 20, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase An enjoyable old style adventure romp. Dont expect it to be the same as any of the film versions, which have elaborated considerably on the story and added female companionship for much of the hero's exploits which does not happen on the printed page.

This tale of derring do is an undemanding quick read that certainly thrilled many when it came out and for years afterwards (a senior friend of mine still claims it as one of his all time favourites having read it as a boy). The excitement levels may seem a little tame compared with more modern adventure fare but it still instils a sense of charm and nostalgia that works well for myself. Belief has to be suspended a few times, several characters pull off supposedly convincing disguises that fool those around them to a degree that Shakespearean cross dressers would have been proud of. But then, suspension of belief is still fairly prevalent in many more recent offerings, so for the sake of artistic licence, we can allow Mr Buchan his elaborations. All in all, I enjoyed my afternoon in a coffee shop testing out my new Kindle and the 39 Steps was a pleasant way to start. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble® Copyright © 2014 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 1 The Man Who Died 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. I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. 'Richard Hannay,' I kept telling myself, 'you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.' It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days. But from the first I was disappointed with it.

In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom. That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club—rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening papers.

They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning. About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Cafe Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going.

I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape. My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home. I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.

'Can I speak to you?' he said. 'May I come in for a minute?' He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm. I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back. 'Is the door locked?' he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand. 'I'm very sorry,' he said humbly. 'It's a mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of man who would understand. I've had you in my mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?' 'I'll listen to you,' I said. 'That's all I'll promise.' I was getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap. There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down. 'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight.

You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.' I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe. 'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman. A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad—yet. Say, Sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.' 'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.' He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it: He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-Eastern Europe.

I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers. He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted. I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.

He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me—things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads. When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell. 'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und Zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice.

If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.' I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little. 'Yes and no,' he said. 'They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn't be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you're going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing.

Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win.' 'But I thought you were dead,' I put in. 'MORS JANUA VITAE,' he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) 'I'm coming to that, but I've got to put you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?' I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon. 'He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out—not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly.

That's why I have had to decease.' He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting interested in the beggar. 'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen.' 'That's simple enough, anyhow,' I said. 'You can warn him and keep him at home.' 'And play their game?' he asked sharply. 'If he does not come they win, for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are warned he won't come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th.' 'What about the British Government?' I said. 'They're not going to let their guests be murdered.

Tip them the wink, and they'll take extra precautions.' 'No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives and double the police and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder.' I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat-trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes.

If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it. 'Where did you find out this story?' I asked. 'I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy.

Then ...' The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more whisky. 'Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to stay closed in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him ... He came in and spoke to the porter ... When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God's earth.' I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next. 'I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again.' 'How did you manage it?' 'I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch at disguises.

Then I got a corpse—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies.

I didn't dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn't any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to meet you ... There, Sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business.' He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined. By this time I was pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn. 'Hand me your key,' I said, 'and I'll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I'm bound to verify a bit if I can.' He shook his head mournfully. 'I reckoned you'd ask for that, but I haven't got it.

It's on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You'll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you'll get proof of the corpse business right enough.' I thought for an instant or two. 'Right. I'll trust you for the night. I'll lock you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, Mr Scudder. I believe you're straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I'm a handy man with a gun.' 'Sure,' he said, jumping up with some briskness. 'I haven't the privilege of your name, Sir, but let me tell you that you're a white man. I'll thank you to lend me a razor.' I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows.

Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech. (Continues...) Excerpted from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. Copyright © 2014 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. 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. JOHN BUCHAN - The 39 Steps JOHN BUCHAN JOHN BUCHAN John Buchan (1875-1940) – First Baron Tweedsmuir of Enfield Scottish diplomat, barrister, journalist, historian, poet, and novelist, whose most famous thriller was The Thirty Nine Steps (1915), his 27th book.

Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of the story, made in 1935, is ranked as one of the director’s best works. Buchan published nearly 30 novels and seven collections of short stories. “Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honourable adventure.” John Buchan was born in Perth, Scotland, as the eldest son of Rev. John Buchan and Helen (née Masterton) Buchan. He studied at the University of Glasgow and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he had an outstanding career, winning the Stanhope Essay Prize in 1897 and the Newdigate Prize in the following year. In 1901 he became a barrister of the Middle Temple and a private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa, Lord Milner (1901-03). Prester Johnn (1910) was based on his South African experiences. After returning to London Buchan specialized in tax law and continued to write. In 1906 Buchan started to work for the publisher Thomas Nelson and Sons.

He revitalized publication of pocket editions of great literature and virtually edited The Spectator. In 1907 he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor; they had three sons and one daughter. During World War I Buchan was a war correspondent before joining the army. While ill in bed in 1914 during the first months of the war, he wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps. He served on the Headquarters Staff of the British Army in France as temporary Lieutenant Colonel (1916-17). When Lloyd George was appointed Prime Minister, Buchan was made Director of Information (1917-18) and then for a short time Director of Intelligence, a brief interlude in Buchan’s career of which he did not much talk. After the war Buchan became a director of the news agency Reuters. From 1927-35 Buchan was Conservative MP for the Scottish universities. He had then a number of important government posts, serving among others as Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland (1933-34).

In 1935, after moving to Canada, he was created the first Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield, and served until his death on February 11, 1940, as Governor General of Canada. As a writer Buchan started his career in the late 1890s. Buchan published his first novel, SIR QUIXOTE OF THE MOORS in 1895, while still a student at Brasenose College, Oxford. It was followed by such works as SCHOLAR-GIPSIES (1896) and HISTORY OF BRASENOSE (1898). At Oxford Buchan wrote five books, and before he was twenty-five he had published eight books. However, he did not devote himself entirely to writing. After a sojourn in South Africa Buchan became a dedicated supporter of Britain’s imperialism, and viewed some of his earlier literary endeavours rather uncomfortable. GREY WEATHER (1899), his first collection of tales and sketches, and THE WATCHER BY THE TRESHOLD (1902), included some tacitly pagan stories.

The Thirty-Nine Steps presented spy-catcher Richard Hannay, who was modelled after a young Army officer named Edmund Ironside, later Field-Marshal Lord Ironside of Archangel. Buchan met him during WW I. In the story Hannay had all the qualities of a hero, who could defend the English way of life against foreign thread. The book was adapted into screen by Alfred Hitchcock. Buchan was one of the director’s favourite writers, and he had earlier toyed with the idea of filming Buchan’s GREENMANTLE (1916). Often in Hitchcock’s films an innocent man is chased by the police and the villains. In one scene Hannay says: “I know what it is to feel lonely and helpless and to have the whole world against me, and those are things that no men or women ought to feel.” The basic outline of the story was thoroughly worked over in the film. At the end Hitchcock parallels handcuffs with a suggestion of marriage. The sequence in which Hannay was first protected and then betrayed by a jealous Highland crofter, have no counterpart in the book at all.

The 39 Steps was crucial for Hitchcock’s career – it became an international success and brought him to the attention of the American producer David O. Selznick, with whom he would cooperate in Rebecca (1940) and other films. Richard Hannay appeared again in Greenmantle, where the hero plays a spy and stops the Germans from using an Islamic prophet for their own ends. This time Hannay’s adventures take him through Germany and the Balkans to Constantinople and finally to the Near East front of World War I. Another series character, Sandy Arbuthnot, tackle with Hannay a gang of international criminals in THE THREE HOSTAGES (1924). The books end Hannay’s adventures. He is now married, has a son, and is happy with his life as lord of Fosse Manor. When the evil plans of Dominic Medina threaten post-war peace, Hannay returns to his old life of action.

Lawyer Edward Leithen was the central character in three novels, starting from THE POWER-HOUSE (1916), and continuing in THE DANCING FLOOR (1926), which returned again in the theme of paganism, THE GAP IN THE CURTAIN (1932), and SICK HEART RIVER (1941). Dickson McGunn, a respectable Glasgow grocer, appeared in HUNTINGTOWER (1922), CASTLE GAY (1930), AND THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS (1935). In WITCH WOOD (1927), a historical novel, Buchan told about stern Scottish Protestants and devil worship. The Gap in the Curtain was a supernatural story, in which the guests at a country house party are enabled by an unconventional scientist to catch a glimpse of an issue of the Times dated a year ahead. Sir Edward finds himself in the middle of an old struggle between faith and doubt.

Among Buchan’s other works were 24-volume NELSON’S HISTORY OF THE WAR (1915-19), biographies of Montrose (1913, 1928), Walter Scott (1932), Oliver Cromwell (1934) and Augustus (1937). Buchan’s autobiography, MEMORY HOLD-THE-DOOR, was published in 1940.”Victor Maskell, the protagonist modelled on Sir Anthony Blunt in John Banville’s the Untouchable (1997), may regard Buchan as ridiculously old-fashioned. But the kind of material which his thrillers were first to bring into focus – the conspiratorial shadow cast by contemporary history, the challenge to integrity and cohesion, the bleak vicissitudes of international power play – continue their complex existence in the genre, as shown in not only Kumari (1955) and Helen All Alone (1961) by Buchan’s son, William, but also in Heart’s Journey in Winter (1995) and High Latitudes: A Romance (1996), by James Buchan, John Buchan’s grandson.

Question: Who wrote "The Thirty Nine Steps"?
Answer: John Buchan