My Photo

2025

  • Daphne du Maurier: The King's General
  • Deborah Lawrenson: The Secretary
  • Richard Cohen: How to Write like Tolstoy
  • Adrian Tinniswood: Noble Ambitions
  • Adrian Tinniswood: The Power and the Glory
  • Martin Williams: The King is Dead, Long Live the King
  • Gavin Plumley: A Home for all Seasons
  • Robert Harris: Precipice
  • Nigel Slater: A Thousand Feasts
  • Joan Aiken: Tales of London Town
  • Alan Connor: 188 Words for Rain
  • Ben Robinson: English Villages: An Extraordinary Journey through Time

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

Cornflower book group

« A bookish chain | Main | A writing studio »

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

ChrisCross53

Oh, how strange, I've got Witch Wood - I came across a reference to it and downloaded it out of curiosity, because I'd only heard of 39 Steps, but I haven't read it yet... currently engrossed in Miss Hargreaves... and trying to get into The Fountain Overflows...

Cornflower

Miss Hargreaves is fun, and I think it's fair to say The Fountain ... takes a bit of getting into!

Barbara MacLeod

Re. biography of Buchan: I will ask around.

A thought: it strikes me that Alexander McCall Smith might own such a book or know where to locate one!

Lyn

I also have Witch Wood downloaded (haven't read it yet) because I posted a poem by the Marquis of Montrose on my blog, then read C V Wedgwood's biography of Montrose & someone commented on the post & recommended WW. I've read several of Buchan's adventure novels & I enjoy his sister, O Douglas's, novels. If only there was enough time to read all the books recommended to us that lead on from books we've already read...

B R Wombat

I read Witch Wood a few years ago and know I enjoyed it, though I must admit I don't remember many plot details - age is to blame, not Buchan.

Erika

John Buchan's wife, Susan, Lady Tweedsmuir, has written on John in various places. There is a nice account in The Edwardian Lady" of how she first met his family --very modest, pawky and Scottish, while she came from privileged upper class England. Her own, very low key novels are infinitely better than his but not well known. Try "Cousin Harriet", the first of a trilogy which catches the end of the 19th Century in provincial, titled England, like a fly in amber. I have re-read it at least twice with growing pleasure each time.

Erika

I have been able to run down only 1 review of "Cousin Harriet" on Amazon Books
A reader:
>>Writing in the 1950s, Lady Tweedsmuir sets her novel in the 1870s, but one is most closely reminded of Jane Austen (Cousin Harriet's favourite novelist, so the author must have had her in mind) who wrote in and about the first decades of the nineteenth century. The book is enormously enjoyable: charming, gripping, feel-good, with an Austenesque happy ending and its feet firmly on the ground. Austen could not have got away with the explicit situation around which the novel revolves, either in her day or for many decades; but she, like Trollope and Dickens, knew all about the seamy side of life in her time.
Lady Tweedsmuir hasn't quite Austen's elegance and wit, but she is a worthy disciple. I read this book in one sitting and finished it feeling more happy and satisfied than a book has left me for a long time<<

It is long overdue for reprinting in my opinion.

GeraniumCat

Witchwood is tremendous! I've downloaded it on to my Kindle recently to re-read, because I can't lay my hands on my print copy. But I do recommend it, although I think Sick Heart River may be his best, myself. I've only read The Edwardian Country House (I think it was called) by Lady Tweedsmuir, and wish I had a copy. Shall certainly try Cousin Harriet.

Erika

I am being given a copy of "John Buchan: the Prebyterian Cavalier", written by David Godine. Lots of dirt cheap copies are available through ADDALL.com

So now I know of one other person who has read Sick Heart River"! I agree that it is one of his very best. I'd say that "John McNab" is up there too--very different and pretty funny.

Barbara MacLeod

No biography, but I found the following in Caledonia Books, Glasgow today:

[1] John Buchan by His Wife and Friends , Hodder & Stoughton, 1947, hardback.

[2] Unforgettable, Unforgotten , by Anna Buchan (his sister, O. Douglas), Hodder & Stoughton, 1945, hardback, first edition.

Barbara MacLeod

Oops ... that should have been Thistle Books in Otago Street, Kelvinbridge area.

Cornflower

Wonderful!

Cornflower

I so agree, Lyn.

Cornflower

Mr. C. has just requested it from the library, so with any luck we might get a post on it out of him soon.

Cornflower

Thankyou so much for this information, Erika.

Cornflower

Yes, this post is opening up all sorts of reading trails.

Ruth M.

Buchan gets considerable mention in Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918, which is well worth reading in its own right. It's a fascinating, fast-moving history of those years with primary emphasis on those who supported the war and those who opposed it, as well as those who executed it.

Cornflower

Many thanks, Ruth.

Rebecca

I enjoyed reading 39 Steps, but it was certainly not great literature--more like the current smash, Hunger Games--lots of plot and action, not too much more, somewhat like a TinTin story for grownups. I thought he was a one-hit wonder!

The comments to this entry are closed.

Current reading:

  • Sam Leith: The Haunted Wood

Please note

  • Sidebar book cover thumbnail pictures are affiliate links to Amazon, and the storefront links to Blackwell's and The Book Depository are also affiliated; should you purchase a book directly through those links, I will receive a small commission. Older posts may also contain affiliate links to one of those bookshops. I am not paid to produce content and all opinions are my own.

A request

  • If you wish to use any original images or content from this site, please contact me.

The Book Depository

  • Free Delivery on all Books at the Book Depository

Cornflower Book Group: read

2010

2009

Statcounter 2

  • Statcounter 2

2021

2017