John MacNab

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 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 moved to Canada in 1935 where he became the first Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield.

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. His 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 in Canada from 1935 until his death in 1940, the year his autobiography Memory Hold-the-door was published.

ANDREW GREIG is the author of six collections of poetry, two books about his Himalayan expeditions (Summit Fever and Kingdoms of Experience), and five novels including The Return of John Macnab, to which he is currently completing a sequel. His latest book is Preferred Lies, a memoir about golf and everything else.

JOHN BUCHAN

John Macnab

Introduced by Andrew Greig

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This eBook edition published in 2011 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 1924 by Chambers Journal.
This edition first published in 2007 by Polygon books, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

Copyright © The Lord Tweedsmuir and Jean, Lady Tweedsmuir
Introduction copyright © Andrew Greig, 2007

Map courtesy of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, without the express written permission of the publisher.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-113-2

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Introduction

‘So you reckon I’m a bit like this John Macnab bloke?’ Mal Duff mused as our truck bumped across the Tibetan plateau with the still-unclimbed North-East Ridge of Everest diminishing behind us. ‘Didn’t he shoot a salmon, a stag and a brace of grouse all in the same day?’

I shook my head. ‘No, that’s a debased form of the original ploy. The original was a challenge that he could poach a deer or a salmon from three Highland estates between such and such a date, after telling the owners he was going to.’

‘Wow, that’s brilliant!’ Mal had looked exhausted and depressed since he’d torn his diaphragm at 8,000 metres, somehow struggled off the Ridge and shortly thereafter called off our Expedition. Now he was back to his enthused, unstoppable self. ‘You can shoot, can’t you, Andy?’

I nodded. I’d been brought up in the country, could use a .22, had been in the rifle club at school.

‘And I can catch the salmon, no problem. And then we’ve got the climbing – that’ll give us an edge over the ghillies. I’ve an SAS mate who can get us infra-red gear . . .’

I wasn’t sure what he was raving about, but it was good to see my old friend coming alive again.

‘Of course, we’d need to up the stakes a bit,’ he mused. ‘Let the papers know, make it into a bit of a Land Access rights thing . . .’ He thumped the ancient dashboard of the Chinese truck and whooped. ‘Got it! The third estate has got to be Balmoral! When the Royals are there!’

I looked at him, then at Everest, still massive behind us. I’d thought he’d been joking when he first brought that one up.

‘Duff,’ I said, ‘you’re completely crazy. We can’t do it.’

‘For when we get a bit old for this Himalayan malarkey! If this John Macnab fella could do it, why can’t we?’

‘In the first place John Macnab wasn’t one person, he was three. And secondly, he didn’t exist. It was a story by John Buchan.’

‘The Thirty-Nine Steps fella?’ I nodded, he gazed off into the distance, in the direction of home, Scotland.