"Realism coloured by poetry": rereading John Buchan.(Book Review)

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.

--Dr. Johnson, quoted by John Buchan

The life of reason is our heritage and exists only through tradition. Now the misfortune of revolutionists is that they are disinherited, and their folly is that they wish to be disinherited even more than they are.

--George Santayana, quoted by John Buchan

"You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Satan."

--Andrew Lumley, in Buchan's The Power-House

"Really?" I believe that was my cautious response when a friend urged me to read John Buchan's memoir Pilgrim's Way. It was, he said, "a remarkable spiritual testament," or words to that effect. Hmm. The source of the recommendation was unimpeachable: one of the most intelligent and least frivolous people I know. Yet I had read Buchan--probably the same books you have: The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), for example, the short, bracing spy thriller (or "shocker," as Buchan called it) in which the dashing Richard Hannay battles a perfidious German spy ring and--after a series of wild, pulse-rattling cliffhangers--emerges triumphant in the nick of time. I had also read Greenmantle (1916), the somewhat longer, but still bracing, spy thriller in which the dashing Richard Hannay battles a perfidious German spy ring and--after a series of wild, pulse-rattling cliffhangers--emerges triumphant in the nick of t. I had even read Mr. Standfast (1919), the moderately long spy thriller in which a dashing Richard ... German ... wild ... emerges ... nick of time.