A man o' pairts

   

    "John Buchan's career as a writer, one of the best-selling of his day, would have been remarkable, even in someone who had done nothing else. He wrote more than a hundred books, including twenty-seven novels, six substantial biographies, a monumental twenty-four-volume contemporary account of the First World War, three works of political philosophy and a legal textbook. There were also dozens of poems and short stories, and about a thousand articles for newspapers and periodicals. As well as a writer, he was a scholar and an antiquarian and, at various times, a barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, publisher, director of wartime propaganda, Member of Parliament, and imperial proconsul. He had been a skilled and intrepid mountaineer in his youth and was always a dedicated fisherman and a prodigious walker. And he did all this while suffering from debilitating illness for most of his adult life."

Ursula Buchan, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan.

Comments

[Mary]

Admirable to have done so much, but it certainly makes one feel like a slug. ;)

[Cornflower]

It certainly does!

[Claire (The Captive Reader)]

Quite a life! I'm also thankful that, as Governor General of Canada, he established (with Lady Tweedsmuir's intense involvement) the Governor General's Literary Awards. I used the list of past winners to guide my reading throughout my teens and it's a fantastic introduction to the world of CanLit.

[Cornflower]

Thank you for that recommendation, Claire - I'm sure it's an excellent resource.
For anyone interested, here's the list: http://bit.ly/2V0scYh

[Nora]

What a life, I will add "Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps" to my To Reads. My only experience of his writing is the Thirty-Nine Steps and a university theatre's production of the same which was a very hilarious adaptation of the story by Patrick Barlow (the production was described as 'imagine a Monty Python version of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller").

[Cornflower]

That sounds irresistible, Nora!

[Curzon]

I saw that production of The Thirty-Nine Steps at the Criterion theatre, Piccadilly, when my son James was on the lighting team. It was exactly as Nora described, and none the worse for it. But do watch the original film (b&w) which is very atmospheric; I didn’t enjoy the later one with Robert Powell nearly as much.