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From the Introduction by Andrew Greig* in John MacNab:
John MacNab is the sunniest of Buchan's fictions, as Sick Heart River is the most dark and deeply felt. Both take Sir Edward Leithen as the central character, the one Buchan wryly acknowledged as being closest to himself. John MacNab stands apart from the Richard Hannay novels for it is an adventure, not a thriller...It also has the most interesting female character in Buchan's fiction. The novel is a comedy-adventure, full of flicks of wit, mischief, mockery and mickey-taking; like all good comedy it ends in an engagement, a feast, self-knowledge, forgiveness and healing.
*Andrew Greig wrote The Return of John MacNab. It may have less elevated protagonists, different politics and a female character that was centre stage, yet the heart of MacNab remains the same and it's well worth a read once you've the book that inspired it.
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About John Buchan
John Buchan led a truly extraordinary life: he was a diplomat, soldier, barrister, journalist, historian, politician, publisher, poet and novelist. He was born in Perth in 1875, the eldest son of a Free Church of Scotland minister, and educated at Hutcheson’s Grammar School in Glasgow. He graduated from Glasgow University then took a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. During his time there – ‘spent peacefully in an enclave like a monastery’ – he wrote two historical novels.
In 1901 he became a barrister of the Middle Temple and a private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa. In 1907 he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor; they had three sons and a daughter. After spells as a war correspondent, Lloyd George’s Director of Information and a Conservative MP, Buchan – now Sir John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield - moved to Canada in 1935 where he had been appointed Governor-General.
Despite poor health throughout his life, Buchan’s literary output was remarkable – thirty novels, over sixty non-fiction books, including biographies of Sir Walter Scott and Oliver Cromwell, and seven collections of short stories. In 1928 he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain’s oldest literary prize for his biography of the Marquis of Montrose. Buchan’s distinctive thrillers – ‘shockers’ as he called them – were characterised by suspenseful atmosphere, conspiracy theories and romantic heroes, notably Richard Hannay (based on the real-life military spy William Ironside) and Sir Edward Leithen. Buchan was a favourite writer of Alfred Hitchcock, whose screen adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps was phenomenally successful.
John Buchan served as Governor-General of Canada until his death in 1940, the year his autobiography Memory Hold-the-door was published. His last novel Sick Heart River was published posthumously in 1941.
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