The self-made Scot.(Reconsiderations)

John Buchan opens the door to the world one's being seeks--a world of thickets refreshed by rain showers, of streams tinkling over boulders smoothed by uncountable winter floods, of the sharp cry of an unseen bird in a bush, of peat smoke rising lazily from a cottage chimney in the calm evening air, a world of nature utterly at peace and yet--here is the key Buchan ingredient--tinged with the menace of man the enemy.

Buchan knew the landscapes he describes so evocatively--they are usually Scottish, not English--because he took his greatest pleasure, all his life, in walking the country ways and scrambling in high places. He fished; he watched birds; he learnt the ...