The fifth and final of the series of Richard Hannay ‘spy’ novels by John Buchan. As usual, more interesting for its social history and the light it sheds on the mentality of the right-wing squirearchy than for the – in fact quite thrilling – boys’ adventure plot. Plot in three parts 1. In the glory […]
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The Island of Sheep by John Buchan (1936)
Posted by Simon on August 26, 2014
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-island-of-sheep-john-buchan/
The Three Hostages by John Buchan (1924)
Buchan’s hero, Richard Hannay, was always a posh pukka public schoolboy hero; his ‘let’s biff the blighters, Sandy!’, ‘oh hooray! another grand show!’ style is part of the semi-comic appeal of The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, novels in which he is a relatively junior, unknown, everyman figure. However, by the time of Mr Standfast, Hannay is a […]
Posted by Simon on August 24, 2014
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/the-three-hostages-john-buchan/
Mr Standfast by John Buchan (1919)
I always felt that I was a better bandit than a detective Thiis is the third and longest of the five Richard Hannay novels, set against the backdrop of the Great War as it entered its fourth and crucial year. Its length is its terrible weakness as, instead of depth or subtlety, Buchan just piles […]
Posted by Simon on August 22, 2014
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/mr-standfirst-john-buchan/
Greenmantle by John Buchan (1916)
This is the second of Buchan’s five thrillers told in the first person by the bluff, straight-talking South African mining engineer-cum posh chap Richard Hannay. Whereas The Thirty-Nine Steps which is about foiling a German plot to smuggle military secrets out of England, is set just before the outbreak of the Great War, this sequel was written between […]
Posted by Simon on August 18, 2014
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/greenmantle-john-buchan/
The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)
Famous ripping yarn, the first novel to feature the dashing hero Richard Hannay, I’d forgotten it is set in the last months of peace before the outbreak of World War I, with Germany the enemy and the threat of war hanging over every sentence. Buchan wrote it in bed while suffering from the duodenal ulcer […]
Posted by Simon on August 14, 2014
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/the-thirty-nine-steps-john-buchan/
The Good Soldier Švejk, Part Three: The Glorious Licking by Jaroslav Hašek (1922)
Volume Three finds the good soldier Švejk comfortably surrounded by a cohort of characters we’ve got to know by now – long-suffering Lieutenant Lukáš, Quartermaster Sergeant-Major Vaněk, clever one-year volunteer Marek (to some extent a self-portrait of the author), choleric Colonel Schröder, fat Baloun who can’t stop eating, the occultist cook Juradja, Chodounský the scared […]
Posted by Simon on October 14, 2019
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/the-good-soldier-svejk-part-three-the-glorious-licking-jaroslav-hasek/
Captain James Cook: A Biography by Richard Hough (1994)
A grave, steady man (Boswell, quoted page 342) I’ve covered a lot of the detail of the three epic voyages of discovery carried out by Captain James Cook in my review of the current exhibition about them being held at the British Library in London. That review includes detail of the routes, the places ‘discovered’ […]
Posted by Simon on July 2, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/captain-james-cook-a-biography-richard-hough/
