The discovery gets Scudder “a long knife through his heart”.
Lazing around in his Fitzrovia flat, he’s spurred into action when his neighbour Scudder uncovers a German plot to steal Britain’s naval plans – “the most finished piece of blackguardism since the Borgias”. Richard Hannay, his resourceful hero, is also restless. “During the first months of war and compelled to keep my mind off too tragic realities, I gave myself to stories of adventure,” Buchan wrote in his memoir. In earshot of the lapping waters of the Kent coast, Buchan conjured up a barrelling tale of doppelgangers and assassins. It has been filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted for TV, stage and radio, and never once been out of print. When his Edwardian spy novel was first published, 100 years ago this month, it created a blueprint for the modern thriller – or, to use Buchan’s term, “shocker”.
John Buchan penned it at a Broadstairs nursing home in 1914 as he recovered from a duodenal ulcer. The Thirty-Nine Steps, one of the greatest chase stories in literature, was actually written in bed.
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