John Buchan
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘John Buchan’
Richard Hannay was finding life in London a little slow until a self-confessed dead man walked into his rooms.
It is May 1914, and Scotsman Richard Hannay has recently arrived in London from South Africa. Hannay is bored, so when a strange American calling himself Franklin P. Scudder slips past him into his flat, he looks forward to being entertained.
The German Empire promised wonders to restless, grudging Europe, and not to let common sense wake us from our dreams.
On the eve of the Great War in 1914, Europe was weary of debates over religion, politics and history. Enervated, cynical and envious, her peoples were dreaming of a better world, so long as it brought instant gratification and did not require them to study those boring lessons of history and religion. As John Buchan explained in his History of the Great War, all Germany asked in return was abject obedience.
John Buchan compared how the Germans and the British understood their empires, and saw two very different pictures indeed.
John Buchan explains why the German Empire took the risk of engaging the British Empire in the Great War. The risk did not seem very serious, because the British had let their colonies become so independent and decentralised that London had no way to make them fight. And that was where the Germans made their mistake.
John Buchan was moved by the way the nations of the British Empire volunteered for service in the Great War.
John Buchan, novelist, Governor General of Canada, and leading historian of the Great War, reminds us that the countries of our Commonwealth and Empire played a decisive role in frustrating the ambitions of the German Empire – all without having to be asked.
Richard Hannay sees for himself how political activists trick decent people into supporting their quest for power.
Early in the Great War, Richard Hannay is in Constantinople, in pursuit of a German secret agent named Hilda von Einem. Hilda has duped a dreamy Muslim mystic into believing Germany shares his vision for society, and as Sandy Arbuthnot explains, that could be very bad both for the Arab world and for England.
Richard Hannay tracks a German spy down to a French château, but Hannay’s sense of fair play gives his enemy a chance.
Richard Hannay and Mary Lamington are on the tail of a German spy, who has been posing as an English gentleman named Moxon Ivery during the Great War. The chase has led to a French château, where Mary has uncovered a cache of biological weapons, and now Hannay has surprised the man himself.