25. The Thirty-Nine Steps: The First James Bond

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Book Club — "The Thirty-Nine Steps: The First James Bond"

Hosts: Dominic Sandbrook & Tabitha Syrett
Date: July 27, 2026
Episode: 25

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dominic and Tabitha (Tabby) explore John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, a compact adventure novel often dubbed the first modern thriller and a direct ancestor of James Bond. They contextualize the book in the pre-WWI era, delve into Buchan’s remarkable life, unpack the book’s innovative narrative techniques, and analyze its enduring influence on the spy and adventure genres. The hosts maintain their signature blend of scholarly insight and humorous banter throughout, re-enacting key scenes and reflecting on what makes the novel memorable, dated, or occasionally problematic.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Opening & Setup (01:08–02:46)

• The episode opens with a dramatic reading from the first chapter, introducing Richard Hannay and the mysterious, desperate Franklin Scudder, establishing the novel’s immediate pace and tension.
• Dominic frames The Thirty-Nine Steps as a “shocker” and “the template for James Bond, for the Jason Bourne series, for the kind of... Slow Horses or the Lee Child books” [02:48].

Plot Summary & Early Impressions (02:46–08:17)

• Richard Hannay, a Scottish mining engineer, is pulled from boredom into a conspiracy involving a plot to assassinate the Greek Prime Minister, threatening to plunge Europe into war—echoing the real-world events of the eve of WWI.
• Notable for its brevity and breathless pace—"it packs so much in" [03:17, Tabby].
• Hannay goes on the run, evading both police and a sinister group called the Black Stone (possible allusion to the real Black Hand group behind the Franz Ferdinand assassination).
• Tabby and Dominic reflect on their first readings: Tabby found it “unbelievably exciting... one big Highland manhunt” [06:53], while Dominic felt it “more offbeat... more cozy, more low key” than expected, especially compared to later Bond thrillers [07:47].

John Buchan: Life & Influences (08:17–16:03)

• Buchan was a polymath: prolific novelist (~30 books), historian (notably a 24-volume WWI account), journalist, civil servant, MP, government propagandist, and finally Governor General of Canada.
• From a strict Scottish Presbyterian upbringing (“If they want to have games, they have to act out Old Testament stories” [10:23]), Buchan’s fiction reflects both moral seriousness and a love of the outdoors.
• Key literary influences: Walter Scott’s adventure/romance and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The motif of the dangerous quest against evil pervades Buchan’s work.

The Outdoors & Buchan’s Adventure Ethos (13:54–15:54)

• Buchan’s formative years involved real “hardcore” outdoor adventures; his fiction is saturated with chases, landscapes, and nature as a proving ground for character.
• Early links are drawn between Buchan’s outdoorsiness, the Victorian/Edwardian cult of moral fiber via nature, and the origins of the Scouts [15:24].

Education, Early Career & Imperial Adventures (16:03–21:31)

• Buchan’s classical education at Glasgow and Oxford, his rapid rise (“he becomes president of the Oxford Union” [16:22]), and extraordinary network (friends like Churchill and Kipling).
• Buchan’s South African years under Alfred Milner during Boer War reconstruction: sees the British Empire as a “humanitarian and international” force, yet notably ahead-of-his-time in advocating political rights for black South Africans [19:47, Dominic quoting Buchan].

The Road to The Thirty-Nine Steps (21:59–29:12)

• Post-South Africa, Buchan faces “a massive comedown” in London mirroring Hannay’s malaise in the novel [21:59].
• The book’s title inspiration: Buchan’s daughter counted 39 steps down to a private Kent beach [28:52]. The novel is written while nursing an ulcer, as entertaining self-therapy.
• The “shocker” genre: adventure “where the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible” [29:12, Buchan’s dedication].

Reception & Influence Among WWI Soldiers (30:06–32:15)

• Initially under-reviewed, it becomes a word-of-mouth hit among soldiers. An officer writes from the trenches: “One wants something to engross the attention without tiring the mind... greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells” [31:02, quoted by Dominic].

Literary Lineage: Genre, Predecessors & Innovations (32:15–37:46)

• The 39 Steps draws on Conan Doyle and Rider Haggard—quest/adventure, clues, disguises.
• Also part of “invasion literature,” a forgotten genre imagining Britain invaded (e.g., The Battle of Dorking, The Riddle of the Sands). The Daily Mail even steered fictional invasions through their reader strongholds [36:00, Dominic].
• The difference: Buchan's novel moves rapidly between varied locations (London, the Scottish Lowlands, the Thames Valley, the Kent coast), unlike earlier adventures that stayed put [40:07–43:44].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Buchan’s writing pace:
  “Over the next four years he writes a total of 2 million words, 24 volumes covering the entirety of the war... [it] is actually quite good.”
  — Dominic [27:41]
• On the ‘shocker’ genre:
  "The romance where the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible"
  — Buchan, quoted by Tabby [29:12]
• On the book’s immediacy:
  "It must have been so strange to read an imitation of real life events in the pages of a thriller"
  — Tabby [49:45]
• On problematic elements:
  “When you first read it, you think to yourself, oh, John Buchan, you’ve really let yourself down... You’re quite wrong actually. Cause Buchan is toying with you here. Scudder is not right.”
  — Dominic [50:52]
• On the villain archetype:
  "Foreign agents hiding in plain sight and pretending to be British... In Ian Fleming’s books, the villains are often foreigners pretending to be British."
  — Dominic [52:33]
• On pace and innovation:
  “The big innovation here is how quickly the narrative moves between these different locations... it must have seemed to the readers of 19-, I mean, captivating, you know, almost breathless.”
  — Tabby [44:38]

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Segment Timestamps for Key Topics

• [01:08–02:46] Dramatic re-enactment of the novel’s opening, defining the “shocker”
• [02:46–05:13] Setting out the plot and main characters (Hannay, Scudder, the Black Stone)
• [08:17–16:03] John Buchan’s background and influences, upbringing, and outdoor ethos
• [16:03–21:31] Oxford, early career, imperial idealism, and political climate
• [25:57–29:12] Inspiration for the book & origin of the “39 steps” title
• [30:06–32:15] Reception, impact on WWI soldiers
• [32:15–37:46] Literary context: Conan Doyle, invasion literature, forgotten popular genres
• [39:32–45:57] What makes The Thirty-Nine Steps special? Rapid pace, shifting locations, technological modernity (trains, cars, planes)
• [45:57–53:24] The nature of the villains and motif of ‘enemy within’
• [56:23–59:26] Supporting characters—caricatured political types, class satire, cameo roles
• [59:26–66:05] Hannay’s everyman/outsider status, masculinity, and the Bond comparison
• [66:05–69:54] Final verdict, ratings, and the book's strengths and weaknesses

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Critique, Final Verdict, & Influence

• Despite some “implausible” or “rushed” plotting (especially at the climax), both hosts find the book an enjoyable, significant read, especially for those interested in thrilers’ roots.
• Both rate it a 7/10, appreciating its humor, influence, and vivid chase sequences, but noting the thin villain characterization and anticlimactic ending.
• The book’s true significance is as “a great template” for subsequent adventure/spying fiction.
  "It’s so massively influential... especially this character" [63:47, Dominic].

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Featured Books & Upcoming Titles (69:54–70:41)

• Next on the Book Club: Goldfinger (Ian Fleming), My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway), Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), Lolita (Nabokov), Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
• Launch announcement for the Book Club Notes newsletter.

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Tone & Style

The hosts maintain an engaging, playful, slightly irreverent tone throughout, mixing history with banter, self-mockery, and affectionate send-ups of the book’s more improbable moments. Their enthusiasm and expertise combine to make the discussion rich and accessible for both literary buffs and newcomers.

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Conclusion

The Thirty-Nine Steps is recommended as a brisk, influential classic. While some elements may feel dated or problematic, its impact on the modern thriller and spy story is undeniable—and its pace, humor, and spirit still resonate today. A worthwhile read, especially for those interested in the roots of James Bond and contemporary spy fiction.

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Notable Quote

"The Buchan firmament is peopled by characters who are instinctively patriotic, romantically unselfish and ready at a moment's notice to abandon everyday duty to do service to the cause."
— John Keegan, quoted by Dominic [58:54]

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For those seeking adventure in both fiction and podcasts, this episode is a fast-paced, informative, and enjoyable exploration of a genre-defining novel.

Transcript

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Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun.

[Dominic]

An army hung on her every word.

[Tabby]

My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

[Dominic]

I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow, though I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man with a short brown beard and small gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor with whom I'd passed the time of day on the stairs.

[Tabby]

Can I speak to you?

[Dominic]

He said.

[Tabby]

May I come in for a minute?

[Dominic]

He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm. I got my door open and motioned him in.

[Tabby]

Is the door locked?

[Dominic]

He asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand.

[Tabby]

Im very sorry, he said humbly. It's a mighty liberty, but you look the kind of man who would understand. I've had you in mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?

[Dominic]

I'll listen to you, I said. That's all I'll promise. I was getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap. There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which, characteristically tabby he filled himself. He filled himself a stiff whisky and soda. He drank it off in three gulps and cracked the glass as he set it down. Pardon, he said.

[Tabby]

I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to to be dead.

[Dominic]

What a strange man. So that's the opening chapter of John Buchan's the 39 Steps, which was published in 1939, and Buchan himself called it a shocker. But we might call it the first modern thriller. It's a not a long book, so if you haven't already read it, you can probably read it before I start the next sentence.

[Tabby]

Well, certainly before we finish this episode.

[Dominic]

Definitely. So it's barely 100 pages long and it's a period piece that is set just before the First World War. But it is also one of the most celebrated, the most exciting and the most influential adventure stories ever written. It's the template for James Bond, for the Jason Bourne series, for the kind of. You can see the elements of Slow Horses or the Lee Child books or all of these kinds of thrillers and Tabby. I mean, one of the defining things about it is it is so fast paced, isn't it?

[Tabby]

It's incredibly fast paced, even by modern standards. So, for instance, that scene that we opened with, that very dramatic scene when this stranger kind of barges into this flat and pronounces himself dead, that happens only a couple of pages into the book. And given how short the book is, it packs so much in. So our hero in the book is Richard Hannay and he's a mining engineer in his late 30s. He's Scottish born, like James Bond, but he spent most of his life in South Africa. So he's a fellow expatriate like me. He's been in England for the last three months and he's fed up with it. He's bored, he's restless. So he says in about a week. I was tired of seeing sights and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theaters and race meetings. The talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick. I couldn't get enough exercise and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda water that has been standing in the sun. So because of this, he's thinking of cleaning out and going back to the South African veld. And he's been to see a stockbroker and he's been for drinks at his club, then he goes to a music hall, which he hates, and then he comes back to his flat just off Oxford Circus, when this neighbour accosts him. Yes, and this neighbour turns out to be an American called Franklin Scudder, and he's a freelance war correspondent who claims very dramatically that he's uncovered a plot to murder the Prime Minister of Greece and trigger a war in the Balkans that will drag in all the European powers. So obviously this calls to mind the start of the First World War with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And Scudder at this moment thinks he's being watched and he's faked his own death, as we've heard, to evade his pursuers. So it's all very, very dramatic. And this is why he needs Hannah's help to hide in his flat and like utterly, incomprehensibly. Hannah's like, yeah, sure, come in, sleep on my sofa, drink my booze, hang around.

[Dominic]

Well, Hannah doesn't get much choice there, does he? I mean, Scudder basically invites himself in and helps himself to Hannah's whisky.

[Tabby]

But if that happened to me, I'd be calling the police.

[Dominic]

Anyway, at the end of this first chapter, Hannay comes back home to find that something has happened to Scudder. If you've read the book, you know what it is, but we won't give it away. Just in case you haven't. Cause it's one of the great cliffhangers in all modern fiction. Actually. Hannay ends up going on the run and he is pursued across the lowlands of Scotland. He's gone to Scotland for reasons that are slightly obscure, but we'll get into that later on. He's pursued across the by the police, but also by a gang of sinister conspirators who are called the Black Stone. And again, there are echoes of the buildup to the First World War there. Because of course, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a group called the Black Hand. Hannay has a series of adventures and escapades, some of them quite bizarre. He dons a succession of kind of bonkers disguises. He impersonates a roadside labourer, among other things, or an aspiring liberal politician. And every step brings him closer to discovering the truth about the villain's plot. But also to the villain's lair, which is elsewhere in the British Isles. And to its mysterious 39 steps. So this was published in 1915 by John Buchan. A lot of the first readers were men in the trenches in the First World War. And they thought, you know, almost without exception, that this book was just unbelievably exciting. Now, Tabby, when you read it some years after the First World War, did you find it as exciting?

[Tabby]

I did. We were saying just before this that I think I maybe was a little bit too young to kind of understand the plot and what was going on and the kind of political dimension. But I did think it was unbelievably exciting. I thought it was kind of one big Highland manhunt, which is always thrilling. You know, you're just ahead of your would be captors and there were explosions and he was just so very capable and always one step ahead. Hannay himself. But I couldn't remember the ending at all, at all. And I think that's really telling. Cause the final portion of the book is incredibly rushed. What about you?

[Dominic]

Yeah, interesting. So I knew of the book before I read it. I probably read it when I was a teenager. I remember thinking, gosh, that'll be very exciting when I read the 39 steps. And I remember I wasn't that excited by it, I think probably because my palette had been ruined by reading James Bond.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I can see that.

[Dominic]

And sort of subsequent imitators who are more overtly, you know, adrenaline packed. So I sort of thought, gosh, it's more offbeat than I was expecting. More cozy, more low key, you know, there's a lot of sort of hiding in heather in Scotland.

[Tabby]

Yeah, there's a bloody good chaps element to it. Yes, completely there is in James Bond. But that's actually a really good point because this was definitely my first kind of thriller, so I hadn't been ruined for it yet. So that's really interesting.

[Dominic]

The slight tweediness of it, I suppose, didn't grab me when I was maybe 14 or whatever. However, now reading it, I think it's a really nice book. I love the slightly offbeat humor of it actually, the wryness of it with all the different characters. Definitely we'll come to some of the intricacies of the plot, won't we? And obviously there will be spoilers. I mean, you know, it's hard to talk about a thriller without spoiling it a little bit. But maybe first of all we should set the scene with the author and his times. Because actually of all the authors we've done, I mean, John Buchan, I mean he had one of the most interesting and sort of varied lives, didn't he?

[Tabby]

Yeah, I mean, he just strikes me as having been so talented, so competent. So he's incredibly prolific. He wrote almost 30 novels and loads of short stories, essays and a massive 24 volume account of the First World War and thousands of newspaper articles. And that kind of reminds me of, you know, Lord Sumption with his endless, endless, endless books about the Hundred Years War. Yeah, but it's incredible. How did these people, I don't know, how do you have the time when he was doing all the other things that he was doing? Because he was also an imperial civil servant, an mp, he was head of government propaganda in the First World War and he ends up as a hugely popular Governor General of Canada, which is remarkable.

[Dominic]

And actually the most famous photo of him, if you Google John Buchan, one of the first photos you find is a very odd, incongruous photo taken by Yusuf Karsh of him when he's Governor General of Canada. He's wearing this enormous native feathered Headdress. Yeah, you know, he's sort of reaching out to the kind of, what they call them, the first nations peoples of Canada. And he looks very grim faced, doesn't he? And kind of beaky. And he's wearing. There's no hint of humor that he's wearing this kind of headdress.

[Tabby]

It's kind of interesting that as well. Cause he very much encouraged kind of the people of Canada to have their own sense of nationhood and stuff. And yet ye. He was quite pro the British Empire.

[Dominic]

Yeah. But I think he thought there was no contradiction between the two, actually.

[Tabby]

No. Well, exactly. Yeah, as we'll see. So let's get into his life in a bit more detail because as we've said, he is such an interesting character with one of, in fact, surely the most varied career of any writer that we've done on this show so far.

[Dominic]

So he's born in Perth in 1875 and he's brought up in Kirkcuddy in Fife. And his father was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland. And his mother was very young actually when she had him, she was 18. And he goes to a local school. His father is then transferred to a parish in the Gorbles in Glasgow, very poor area. And he goes to grammar school in Glasgow. And in many ways it's quite an austere background. His parents are very serious. So for example, on Sundays, you know, you'd expect this for the Free Church of Scotland kind of minister. They're not allowed to do anything that's kind of fun. So if they want to have games, they have to act out Old Testament stories or they have to read stories about Protestant martyrs and things like that.

[Tabby]

It's great fun. Yeah, that's great fun.

[Dominic]

He's a big reader. He's obviously a very bright boy. He loves Walter Scott above all. So the great, you know, sort of romantic Scottish novelist of the early 19th century, the guy who in many ways invents the idea of Scotland and Scottish history and invents stories like Ivanhoe or something, these stories of great kind of derring do and excitement and romance and all of this. You can see that in his fiction, I think.

[Tabby]

Oh, totally. So a book of his that I. That I love, Buchan's is called witchwood, set in 1700s. And there's a map of Walter Scott in that. I mean, it's so obvious, the adventure, the chivalry, the romance, all that.

[Dominic]

But one of the other elements in Buchan's boyhood is a book that we've talked about before in the concepts of Little Women, which is Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

[Tabby]

Yeah, thrilling.

[Dominic]

Well, so there's a biography of John Buchan by his granddaughter, Ursula Buchan, whom I know, who I've met.

[Tabby]

Really?

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

You do have friends in high places.

[Dominic]

We on the Rest is history. We mentioned John Buchan slightingly, and Ursula Buchan listened to it and wrote to us.

[Tabby]

I actually did know this. Yes.

[Dominic]

And she puts out that I was wrong, that I had maligned him and I was wrong. She put me right. So she's an excellent woman. I take my hat off to her. Anyway, she says, you know, Pilgrim's Progress, which people who listen to our Little Women episode may remember in Pilgrim's Progress, this character called Christian who goes through all these kind of trials and tribulations to kind of reach what's called the celestial City or something like that. Anyway, the idea of the quest, the idea of defeating evil in this kind of desolate landscape and all of this kind of thing, there's a lot of that in a lot of John Buchan's adventure stories. You know, you can perhaps see it under the surface. Anyway, that makes them sound very boring, the Buchans. But actually outdoorsiness is a huge part of Buchan's life and his fiction. We were talking beforehand about school trips and outings when we were teenagers and, you know, being forced in forced marches across bleak landscapes and sort of camping trips and things like that. If you like that, this is undoubtedly the book for you because Buchan is drawing on his childhood memories of times when he and his mates would kind of roam around outside. He was part of various gangs, there were always fights and scrapes. So given that he's actually, as it were, a good boy all his life, it's reassuring to read that when he was very small, he was sometimes naughty. So apparently the biggest prank was they got some tower barrels, set fire to them and rolled them into a quarry where they exploded. I mean, I think that is quite hardcore, actually, for a sort of 8 year old or something.

[Tabby]

That is seriously hardcore. I mean, not very Christian as well, but I mean, it's very, very hardcore. I mean, I think it sounds like in that regard they have a wonderful childhood. Yeah.

[Dominic]

Do Christians not set light to tar barrels?

[Tabby]

I don't know. It just isn't entirely in keeping with the Christian martyrs readings of the Old Testament. But maybe it is. Maybe it is. Maybe it's very Old Testament. And so, as we've said, this outdoorsiness is a massive part of his identity and his Fiction. And it's one of the things that readers always associate with John Buchan. So it's chases across Heather Morland's fugitives hiding on remote islands, pursuits across hills and mountains. So we were discussing before this episode, Duke of Edinburgh trips or ordeals, as I would call them. And this is basically one big Duke of Edinburgh expedition. I think for some people it would be incredibly evocative. You know, make you yearn to jump on a train without supplies and survive in the Highlands of Scotland with nothing but your. Your wiles.

[Dominic]

For him, the countryside is this great sort of adventure playground, isn't it? I guess that's how he thinks of it. Like he doesn't live in the countryside. He's one of these writers who uses the countryside as a kind of. As a place of fantasy and a place of fun. I guess he does all stuff like fishing and, I don't know, bird watching and things.

[Tabby]

Love all that. That's great.

[Dominic]

Yeah. John Keegan, in his introduction to one of the editions of the Third Sign of Steps, says the longer the walk, the harder the climb, the more he enjoyed the holiday. That is not you.

[Tabby]

No, that's not me. I hate it when I go on holiday with people and they kind of turf me out of bed at 8am to go, I don't know, water skiing or something. Just leave me alone, okay?

[Dominic]

Wow, you're fun loving.

[Tabby]

But, you know, for Buchan, it's actually not just fun because he thinks it's very good for you. And this is typical of the late Victorian, kind of Edwardian generation who have read moralizers like John Ruskin, the classic, and Matthew Arnold and think that city life and kind of industrialization and all of that is rotting the moral fiber of the British people. And everyone needs to get outdoors and get back to nature and get back to, you know, the soul of old England, moral England. And it's this mood that produces Baden Powell and the Scouts.

[Dominic]

It is. And I have to say, John Buchan would be turning his grave to hear you say old England, because of course, with him it would be Scotland.

[Tabby]

I know. Yes. Forgive me. Forgive me, John.

[Dominic]

Back to his own career. He wins a bursary to Glasgow university when he's 16 years old. He studies classics like you, Tammy. He wins another scholarship to Oxford. He studies classics again at Oxford. He's a big star. The university wins loads of prizes. He becomes president of the Oxford Union.

[Tabby]

Very impressive, isn't he?

[Dominic]

He is impressive. And basically everybody at Oxford thinks he's brilliant, even at this point. He's a published author, so he's had stories published in magazines and things, essays. He's making a lot of money from his writing. I mean, this is an age when you can make tens of thousands of pounds in today's money.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I know. He's already making all this money and he's so young and he's doing so much else alongside it. I mean it's.

[Dominic]

Yeah, that's a lesson to us all. Yeah, I mean, too late for us, but for our younger listeners. So the nice thing about him actually, even though he's come from a sort of outsiders background, he has no chip on his shoulder. No, he loses his Scottish accent quite quickly, but he never loses his sense of being a proud Scot. And his friends at Oxford are very well connected people. So Raymond Asquith, who's the son of the Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, goes on to be killed in the First World War. Another great First World War character called Aubrey Herbert, who was twice offered the throne of Albania, who was a kind of adventurer and conservative mp.

[Tabby]

He hangs out with Churchill a bit too Rudyard Kipling, because he's seen as

[Dominic]

one of the stars of his generation. He gets first. And everybody says he is gonna be an absolute titan. You know, he'll be in politics or he'll do something and you know, his will be a name conjure with. And he's also very likable, I think, isn't he?

[Tabby]

Yeah, in the introduction to the edition that I was reading, it said that he was incredibly likable. He was known for his generosity. He wasn't at all prone to kind of being partisan politically. He was always willing to be polite about the people who he was up against or whatever it may be. But the one thing he said, he had a slight superficial weakness. Just a foible for, you know, he had an eye for the rich and famous. He liked being in their company. But then that was always countered by always being very generous and just a good bloke.

[Dominic]

He becomes a barrister, he's still writing a lot for the newspapers. And then a big development in his life. In 1901, he decides to go off to South Africa. So your neck of the woods, Debbie.

[Tabby]

T R A bru.

[Dominic]

I mean, who knows what that means?

[Tabby]

This is Africa. Okay, I clearly haven't watched Blood Diamond.

[Dominic]

I haven't. So he goes up to South Africa. And why does he go there? The reason is at the beginning of the 20th century, the Boer War is winding down. So this is Britain against the Boer republics and the British Government have asked Alfred Milner, who is the High Commissioner for South Africa. We want you to basically reconstruct South Africa and to incorporate the Boer Republics into the new kind of united colony. And Milner decides that he wants the best and the brightest from Britain to be his kind of assistance. And this is not like a backwater or something. I mean, South Africa absolutely dominates the British imagination in the 1890s, 1900s, because, of course, it's gold and diamonds and all of this.

[Tabby]

So easy to forget that, though, because it borders the First World War so closely.

[Dominic]

Yeah, completely. I think the Boer War is so interesting and really forgotten. And, you know, Milner was a very, very well known character in Britain, really famous. And the people who he recruited were called Milner's Kindergarten. People kind of coined this mocking nickname for these super confident, Oxford educated young men. You know, they're going out in their mid-20s. Milner has recruited them. They're the absolute stars of their generation.

[Tabby]

They're the avengers.

[Dominic]

Yeah, to go and rebuild South Africa. And Buchan is one of them. And Buchan goes, you know, for adventure, of course, but also he believes in the British Empire. He thinks the British Empire is a force for good. It spreads Christian civilization. And he says of it later on, our creed was not based on antagonism to any other people. It was humanitarian and international. We believed we were laying the basis of a federation of the world. Now, lots of listeners may scoff at that, especially listeners who are not kind of British, but this was absolutely what Buchan and Milner and people, I then thought, we're creating a kind of international federation, a brotherhood with Britain leading the way. Some listeners may be wondering, will he go to Africa? What are his racial attitudes? Actually, I'm happy to say they're relatively liberal by the standards of the day. So he was critical of the Boers because he thought they had this sort of sense of eternal superiority over their black African neighbors. And he explicitly said, we want to see black South Africans, and I quote, progressing to equal political rights. Not immediately, but over time. The other thing, though, I mentioned it already in passing. He definitely sees Africa as a place for adventures.

[Tabby]

I think as a lot of those early kind of African before this time, but African settlers did. It was. That's why you get the Happy Valley or whatever. It was a playground. But for him, it's purer than that. It's adventure. It's not just heading down.

[Dominic]

Of course, this must speak to you, Tabby, as somebody who grew up in Africa. No, but I mean, I'm Serious. Do you not think it's the sense of the sort of the big horizons and the veldt and all that sort of stuff?

[Tabby]

Yeah, I think for a lot of people, Africa is like a bug that they can never shake. Once they've lived there or been there or something. Because there is a freedom to the life that people are able to live there, I think.

[Dominic]

Yeah, well, that's definitely what he. Cause he used to go off, didn't he, riding across the landscape. And he would write these sort of lyrical descriptions of. You know, he went off riding from Johannesburg to Pretoria once. And he had this. He describes how one morning he kind of got up and looked up at the landscape. And he writes of, and I quote, a harmony so perfect that it transcended human expression, even human thought. It was like a glimpse of the peace of eternity. You know, this sort of sense that he's at one with the landscape and all of that.

[Tabby]

So that's kind of this outdoorsy ness again, actually has a deeper meaning for him. But in 1903, he comes back to London. And this is a massive. I mean, I suppose, unsurprisingly, given all this. But it's a massive comedown. And he feels exactly as Hannay feels at the beginning of the book. So you come back from this wild world of, you know, big horizons. And having felt you were doing some sort of good, I suppose. And then you come back to London and it's all kind of parties and society. And he feels depressed and alienated. And it's all a bit decadent.

[Dominic]

It's come back to your world, let's be honest.

[Tabby]

Yeah, exactly. This is my happy place. And he tells his sister he's sick of a sedentary London life with clubs and parties and books. Sounds fantastic. And he wrote, I had no longer any impulse to write. I was distressed by British politics, for it seemed to me that both the great parties were blind to the true meaning of empire. London has ceased to have its old glamour. Leaving a dull, mercantile, modern place. Although, you know, I joke, but I do slightly, slightly understand that. That feeling of coming back from Africa and then coming back here.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And he thought of being a writer, but he decides against it. He says that writing fiction will be my hobby, not my profession. So he goes back to legal work and a bit of journalism. And then a friend from Oxford offers him partnership in a publishing firm, Thomas Nelson. And they had once published Walter Scott. So that's obviously a big draw. And he takes it and is paid £1,500 a year.

[Dominic]

Which is a lot of money.

[Tabby]

A lot of. Yeah, so he's already been making a lot of money from his writing by this point. But I suppose this comes the slight sense of expectations unfulfilled or something. A bit of a letdown still.

[Dominic]

Yeah, because he's not quite the star that people expected. He's married. Well, he's married the cousin of the Duke of Westminster. He settles down like Dan Snow. Yeah, well, sister of the Duke of Westminster, I think in Dan Snow's case, he starts writing fiction, but he's not really going anywhere. He tries to go into politics. He's adopted as the Unionist candidate for Peebles in 1911. And that actually informs a moment in the 39 steps where Hannay goes to a political meeting and he meets this guy who's a radical candidate called Sir Henry.

[Tabby]

Who knows nothing about it.

[Dominic]

Yeah, who knows nothing about it and is very naive and kind of misguided and stuff and very kind of idealistic. Hannay says of Sir Henry, he was all for reducing our navy as a proof of our good faith and then sending Germany an ultimatum telling her to do the same. We would knock her into a cocked hat. He said that but for the Tories, Germany and Britain will be fellow workers in peace and reform. And obviously Hannah is mocking him as John Buchan is mocking him as a sort of Jeremy Corbyn kind of idealist. Your style of politics.

[Tabby]

I knew that was going to come up.

[Dominic]

Unbelievable. Yeah, well, when people hear. Yeah, when people hear someone with your accent, they say, come on, that person's a corporinista. Definitely.

[Tabby]

You know, you joke, but probably they would.

[Dominic]

I know they would.

[Tabby]

I've got to let people know my principle somehow.

[Dominic]

So come on.

[Tabby]

Okay. But then soon after this, he runs into hellfire problems. And this is actually how we get to the 39 steps.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Tabby]

So in 1912, he comes down with stomach pains, and at first he thinks it's stress, but it turns out to be a duodenal ulcer. And then that summer in 1914, so, like, we're on the brink of the war here. And so I think that's why a lot of people always think that it's the war that inspired the book, but actually it's this. And he and his family go to a guest house in Broadstairs, Kent, and he's trying to rest because this ulcer is becoming really debilitating. But his daughter Alice, who's six years old, is recovering from an operation and his wife Susie's cousin and her family are just up the road. In a cliff top holiday house has a gate and it opens onto a wooden staircase that leads down through a tunnel to a private beach. And we will come back to this because it is important.

[Dominic]

The staircase. Yeah. Guess how many staircases exactly.

[Tabby]

Just guess, Just imagine. So for much of the holiday, Buchan is in bed and he's been reading detective thrillers, but he's run out and he tells Susie, I should like to write a story of this and take real pains with it. Most detective story writers don't take half enough trouble with the characters and no one cares what becomes of either corpse or murderer.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

So this is what he starts to write and he's writing what he calls a shocker, you know, proving that he can do better than these books that he's been reading.

[Dominic]

I love that origin story. So he's thinking about writing as a detective thriller story.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So it's not quite an adventure story, I mean, because he's thinking about a novel of detection. But then while he's thinking this, something very dramatic happens. So on the 4th of August 1914, Britain joins the First World War. So as you say, lots of people think, oh, he wrote it because we joined the First World War. But actually he was thinking about this book beforehand. Then the First World War kind of found its way in. He writes most of it in London in that autumn. And the reason is that basically his ulcer, which he's now had for two years, has kind of flared up yet again. And his doctors say to him, you have to go to bed and you can't get out of bed. He ends up going to his mother in law's house in Mayfair and he's stuck in bed all day and he writes this book. So the war is very much on his mind, by the way, at this point. So you mentioned he writes this 24 volume history of the First World War. And basically the amazing thing about that, I mean, just get your head around it, he is writing as the war is happening. The deal with the publishers is every two months he has to deliver 50,000 words. So it's 25,000 words a month.

[Tabby]

Extraordinary.

[Dominic]

And basically on what's been going on in the war, it's like history as it's happening. And over the next four years he writes a total of 2 million words, 24 volumes covering the entirety of the war. And I think the general sense is of course those that he doesn't know because he's writing at the time, of course, but it's actually quite good. Like it's genuinely pretty good.

[Tabby]

Really? Have you read any of it?

[Dominic]

I mean, obviously I'm not gonna read 2 million. I've skimmed. I've barely skimmed, to be honest. I skimmed it for about five minutes.

[Tabby]

I'm grateful to hear that. I'm gratified to hear that.

[Dominic]

Yeah. This shocker that Issy calls. That he's gonna write is obviously gonna reflect the mood of the war and his initial plan. God, so often in this series a bad title, always his initial title is. He's gonna call it the Kennels of War.

[Tabby]

Terrible.

[Dominic]

As in, like Let loose the Dogs of War. I guess.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I guess so. Why the Kennels?

[Dominic]

Well, because of dogs. The Dogs of War are gonna come out.

[Tabby]

Right.

[Dominic]

But the Dogs of War is a better title. The Kennels of War is bad.

[Tabby]

Shocker. Yeah. That is a shocker.

[Dominic]

It is a shocker. In the end, he decides on a new title. And this title is inspired by that wooden staircase that we knew the staircase would come back.

[Tabby]

I knew it.

[Dominic]

Amazing. Yeah. Great foreshadowing. So his children said later that his daughter Alice, who was recovering from her operation, when she was up and about, she used to like going down to the beach and she would count the steps, going up and going down, and there were 39 of them. And it just sort of works, doesn't it? The 39 steps? I don't know, just something about it.

[Tabby]

It does, but it sounds really good. Maybe it's just cause we're all used to. But 38 steps doesn't work. You're totally right. So then the book is published in Blackwoods magazine in three parts from July to September 1915, and then as a complete novel on 19 October. And Buchan dedicates it to his friend Thomas Nel, and who's the publisher. And he says, you and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of tale which Americans call the dime novel and which we know as the shocker, the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible. I mean, sometimes not even. And during an illness last winter, I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts. It's a lovely dedication.

[Dominic]

Yeah, I like that.

[Tabby]

Yeah, it's really nice.

[Dominic]

So it comes out. He's just thinking of it, I think as quite a throwaway book. It's a bit of fun, you know, and it doesn't get many reviews and the reviews say, yeah, it's fine, whatever. But as with the Wind of the Willows, which we'll be doing on the show in a couple few weeks, it's a genuine kind of word of mouth, organic hit. So for the men in the trenches, this is what, 1915. There are now hundreds of thousands of men in the trenches, kind of Kitchener's New army, as they were called, which were to replace the original men who'd all been killed. And they're looking for escapism, you know, they're looking for something short and fun that they can take with them. And this is perfect. So in her biography, Ursula Buchan quotes a letter that her grandfather got from an officer on the front who said, it's just the kind of fiction for here. One wants something to engross the attention without tiring the mind. The story is greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells.

[Tabby]

You can see why. And also, I suppose it puts the baddies of this. No, of the baddies that they're kind of up against in the trenches. And you kind of want to feel sort of justified in what you're doing. It's interesting as well because that's how Gatsby became famous in the Second World War.

[Dominic]

Wasn't the Second World War. Yeah, with soldiers? Exactly. You've got a captive audience, I suppose, and they want something to read. And you can imagine soldiers exchanging books maybe. Oh, have a read of this one. It's really good fun. And this is a sort of book that I think would be accessible to readers who don't necessarily want something forbidding, who want something short and. And very entertaining. So it sold tens of thousands of copies by the end of 1915. People who previously thought of John Buchan as a lawyer or as a politician or as a sort of imperial civil servant, they now start calling him the novelist John Buchan, the guy who wrote the 39 steps, that kind of thing. And the publishers say, would you like us to do us more Hannay books? And he says, fine. And he goes on and he writes books like Remandle, which is a great book, and other Hannay thrillers. And he enjoys doing them. He says to his old classics tutor, it's the most restful and delightful thing in the world to write that stuff. That's how I felt when I wrote Adventures in Time Tabby.

[Tabby]

Oh, is it? That's so nice that it was.

[Dominic]

Yeah, restful and Delightful. Exactly.

[Tabby]

Well, it comes through. It comes through in your prose.

[Dominic]

Thank you. Oh, that's kind. And you haven't even read them, so.

[Tabby]

I mean, I've read them all cover to cover. But like Adventures in Time, why is this so successful? And Buchan himself admits that he's drawing on an established formula and it's actually there in the book. So in chapter three, which is called the Adventures, the literary innkeeper, Hannay tells this story to this young innkeeper who's dying to be a writer. And the innkeeper says, by God, it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.

[Dominic]

It is, really.

[Tabby]

Yeah, it is. It totally is. You can see the influence of both stamped on every page. Haggard, you know, they're all about quests and they're a big adventure story set in Africa. And most famously of these is King Solomon's Mines. But also Arthur Conan Doyle, who we've done on the show. And he's in his pomp at this point. Holmes and Watson are venturing out of London to random parts of Britain. And they're having mad adventures, crazy plots. There's always codes, clues, disguises. And this is. Yeah, all over the 39 steps. He's constantly dressing up Hannay, isn't he? And cracking riddles.

[Dominic]

This completely makes sense as something that you would read if you'd be. For the last 10 or 15 years or longer, you've been reading Sherlock Holmes stories, I think. And there's a definite Sherlock Holmes influence on the character of Hannay. But actually, there's another influence that I think is really interesting that some listeners may not be so aware of because it's not really talked about. Now. A huge element of this book is obviously there is a German plot to undermine Britain's defenses and to win the war. That's the basic dominating idea of the book. And this is not a new idea. This was a very familiar idea to people in 1915 because there was a particular genre that doesn't really exist anymore and hasn't existed since the First World War called invasion literature that has been enormously popular in Britain since the Franco Prussian War of 1870. 71. So basically, the first example of this was a book with the very perhaps unpromising title, the Battle of Dorking, which was published in 1871 by a guy called George Tompkins. Chesney. And Chesney was a captain in the Royal Engineers. And he thought, you know, he looked at what happened in the Franco Prussian War, where the Prussians basically won and they created Germany, they smashed the French, they united Germany. And Germany became the great power in Europe. Chesney looked at this and he said, oh, Britain's falling behind. We need to galvanize public opinion. So he writes this story about a German invasion of Britain. So the Germans destroy the Royal Navy with torpedoes, they land troops in Sussex, there is a climactic battle with the British army in Surrey, and then they basically subdue Britain and impose crippling peace terms.

[Tabby]

It's Bedknobs and Broomsticks. That's essentially what it is.

[Dominic]

Bedknoms and Broomsticks has a slight element in that. I'd never thought of that. But Bednoms and Broomsticks is much later, isn't it?

[Tabby]

Yeah, much, much later. It's about the Second World War.

[Dominic]

Yeah, but. But this book, the Battle of Dorking, inspired hundreds of other invasion novels and short stories over the next 40 years. The most famous examples are a guy. There was a guy called William Le Queue. I think his name is. I can never really work out how to pronounce it, but I think it's William Le Queue. He wrote a book called the Great War In England, which involved England being invaded by the French and the Russians. And then when he decided we would probably end up in a World War I alliance with the French and the Russians, he basically rewrote it as the invasion of 1910, in which we're invaded by the Germans.

[Tabby]

Oh, very canny.

[Dominic]

And the invasion of 1910. This is a brilliant detail which I know you'll enjoy. Tabby was basically commissioned and serialized by the Daily Mail, and the Daily Mail said it would be much more effective if aid they go through towns with loads of Daily Mail readers, and this is basically the list of our circulation. Could you make sure they go through?

[Tabby]

I'm brilliant at this.

[Dominic]

I know. I wish I'd done this. I would have loved to doing this. So the Germans. The Germans in the book end up sacking all these towns with large quantities of Daily Mail readers and their home counters. And it sold more than a million copies. It was like a huge thing.

[Tabby]

And now it's totally forgotten. I always think it's so interesting when that happens.

[Dominic]

Yeah, exactly. Although there is one of those books that is slightly more remembered. Again, not massively read, but maybe some listeners will have heard of it. It's the Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers.

[Tabby]

I think that's quite famous. Yeah, yeah.

[Dominic]

Because it's seen as one of the first real spy stories. So that was published in 1903. Sea and in the riddle of the sands you've got two mates and they're on a sailing holiday in the Frisian Islands, which are kind of the Netherlands, North Germany, these sort of islands that nobody's really ever heard of off the coast in the sort of North Sea. And they're on a sailing holiday there. Sounds like a terrible place for sailing. Amid the foggy mud flats of their holiday destination, they find that the Germans have prepared this massive fleet. And the fleet is going to transport an invasion army to Britain. And they're being helped by a former British officer who is disguising himself as a sort of suave, debonair German businessman.

[Tabby]

Michael Fassbender from Inglourious Basterds literally is. Yeah, yeah.

[Dominic]

So for the first readers of the 39 steps, you've got all these books and when they read the 39 steps, they're like, aha, this is going to be one of those. But in a sort of detective, adventure Y format, which is great. The twist, though, is that most of these books are forgotten today. So the question, I guess is what makes the 39 steps different? Why is it not forgotten? What's the secret formula or whatever?

[Tabby]

And we will find out after the break.

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[Tabby]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan.

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[Tabby]

Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes.

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[Tabby]

Welcome back to the book club, everybody. So we promised before the break that we would be unpicking exactly what it is that makes the 39 steps so effective and unusual and something new when set aside the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle. So, Dominic, what is it?

[Commercial Narrator]

Tell us.

[Dominic]

Let's start with the plot. So did you not say to me the other day, Tabby, that you've seen all the James Bond films?

[Tabby]

Yeah, I definitely have seen all the James. I mean, hasn't most people really? I don't think I've seen the kind of the older ones for a good 10 years or so because I really like the Daniel Craig ones.

[Dominic]

But yeah, if you've seen any Bond film, you will know that the actors. Action. It's normally about four or five locations. Moves very quickly between them. One minute you're in Bolivia, the next minute he's gone to Macau or something

[Tabby]

and then you're in a helicopter and then you're in a totally. There's a lot of moving around between

[Dominic]

locations, different forms of transport in exotic locations with a sort of breathless pace and change of scene. You don't really get that in Conan Doyle. So in Conan Doyle the homes in Watson might be in 221B Baker street, but then they'll go out to a place and then they stay at that place. Or in Ryder Hat, who we also mentioned Alan Quatermain, who is the hero, who is brave and intrepid and blah blah, blah. He goes on a quest to Africa, but he just sort of stays in Africa. He doesn't then go to Mauritius or to, you know, Bengal or something. He's just in that one place.

[Tabby]

Yeah, or the Scottish Highlands.

[Dominic]

Or the Scottish Highlands. John Buchan invents this idea, I think, of the rapid change of pace from different locations. So the book is basically in four parts. So the first part is in London, isn't it? So you were describing the. Yeah, he's in London and he's all miserable, isn't he? Because he's come back from Africa.

[Tabby]

The boredom, the last. The longing for open air. Then you know, Scudder comes, sees him, tells him of this elaborate conspiracy theory, and then something happens to Scudder and Hannay decides to flee London by train for Scotland for reasons that are never entirely plausibly explained. You know, I mean, let's face it, you're going to get away with hiding a lot easier among the crowds and the busyness of London than a single figure on a lone kind of Scottish moor. But nevertheless, that's kind of the first shift, isn't it, from London to Scotland.

[Dominic]

Yes.

[Tabby]

And as we said, reflecting Buchan's experience of returning to that kind of urban life, of society, from the excitement of Africa.

[Dominic]

Exactly. And then he goes up to Scotland. He goes up to Galloway and to Tweeddale in Scotland, in the Lowlands. He's been chased by the Blackstone and by the police, and he has a series of.

[Tabby]

Not.

[Dominic]

I mean, you would get this sometimes in a Bond film, you would get a series of sort of strange encounters with slightly bizarre characters. So in this case, there's an innkeeper, there's a bloke who's, like, building a road. There's this guy, Sir Henry, who wants to be a liberal politician.

[Tabby]

Hilarious figure.

[Dominic]

I mean, in one of the sane moments, which I think would be too insane even for the scriptwriters of a Bond film, by complete coincidence, he ends up in the house of the man behind the entire.

[Tabby]

Yeah, the whole of Scotland. Yeah.

[Dominic]

And he wonders what house you arrive at.

[Tabby]

But you know what? I actually won't diss it, because I loved that bit. I had literal chills reading that.

[Dominic]

So those are the chapters, I think, when people talk about the 39 steps that they recall most vividly. Most people, I think, when they think of it, think, oh, it's set in Scotland, isn't it? And there's basically a chase across Scotland, as I did.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

You know, meeting mad people and, like, running across the heather. And actually, this is only, I think, maybe a third of the book, the Scottish section, in terms of total length of the chapters. And after that, he moves on to another location. I mean, it's always in Britain. But he moves back south, doesn't he?

[Tabby]

Yeah, to the Thames Valley. And this is when he's escaped Scotland and has gone to see the Foreign Office head, Sir Walter Bullivant. And he lives in an idyllic, bucolic English pastoral setting, very Wind in the Willows. And he speaks to him. And then from here he goes right back to the beginning and he's back in London again. So that's three different locations.

[Dominic]

And again that's reflecting Buchan's youth because when he was a student at Oxford, he had explored the Thames Valley. He'd gone kind of fishing and rambling and whatnot. And it's very kind of green and very nostalgic, the landscape. You said it was like the wind in the willows. And it absolutely is, actually, isn't it?

[Tabby]

It's the perfect vision of the English countryside and a perfect English summer's day, isn't it?

[Dominic]

It completely is. And it's the England that you get in First World War propaganda posters. They'd put pictures up of the countryside with a countryman standing and it would say, this is your England. Fight for it, or something. And then the final showdown. So this happens at location number four. He goes from London to the south coast, basically to Kent. And this is obviously where he came up with the idea for the book when he was in Broadstairs and in Kent, it's seaside villas. It's people kind of donkeys on the beach, it's people playing tennis, it's people drinking gin and tonic before dinner. It's very, very different atmosphere from the earlier chapters.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Weirdly enough, there's kind of a submarine, like, waiting in the building, lurking off there.

[Dominic]

Exactly.

[Tabby]

Meanwhile, these kind of German spies are camply gallivanting around a tennis court.

[Dominic]

Exactly.

[Tabby]

But the big innovation with this, we introduced the second half by talking about what made the 39 steps different. The big innovation here is how quickly the narrative moves between these different locations. And it must have seemed to the readers of 19. I mean, captivating, you know, almost breathless. Because no sooner does Hannay become involved in the story than he's dressing up as a milkman and he's on the run and he's hopping on a train and then he's dressing up as someone else and then he's, you know. It's a really short book as well. I can't believe how much he manages to pack in. So, contrary to what Buchan originally said the book would be, it's not a detective story. It's not like a detective story of the day really at all, in that it's not set in one location. So you think about the Hound of the Baskervill. We're in the moors, we stay there. We basically move around this small perimeter throughout the course of the book. And he's not spending his time kind of leisurely sniffing for clues and interviewing suspects or sifting through evidence. It's not that cerebral. Although there is a murder early on. It's not a whodunit because Hannay isn't trying to solve the murder. He's not even trying to crack the case, really. It's fortunate that he has this notebook, which means that he. And he's good at puzzles, but it's not the point. He's not investigating it. He's trying to. To escape, essentially, and he's trying to inform the authorities of what he discovers accidentally.

[Dominic]

It's not a whodunit. It's not a detective story by any means. And actually, as you say, I think the pace is partly the point and that's heightened. And again, I think this is a massive innovation. All spy stories have copied since is the use of technology. So if you think about Buchan's heroes, Walter Scott, you know, Walter Scott is backward looking. His stories are set in the past.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Like imagine chivalric.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Rider Haggard, when, you know, they go on the adventure in King Solomon's Mines again. They have guns, but it's like they're going back in time. When they go to Africa and there's kind of these people with spears and there's the temples and lost kingdoms and things like that. It's the modernity of the 39 steps, I think, that makes a difference. So. So at one point, Hannah gets an express train to Scotland. And when he's there, he steals a car. Cars. There are maybe 100,000 cars on the roads at the point when this book comes out. Cars are new. Cars are very exciting. They're the equivalent of what a phone would be, an iPhone for us today. They're about that old, I guess. And he's also. I mean, this is really newfangled. He's chased by a plane. So the plane chase is one of the things that people really remember. He notices a plane overhead. How new would that have been in 1915? And it's such a memorable detail that when Alfred Hitchcock turned this into a film in 1935, the plane is a big element of it. And then Hitchcock took that and he stole it. And he used it again very famously in north by northwest in the 1960s, where Cary Grant is being chased by the crop duster.

[Tabby]

Yeah. The ominous moaning of the engine overhead. And he's stuck out in the open and there's nowhere to run to or there's nothing to hide behind. I think that's a great detail.

[Dominic]

It's really fantastic.

[Tabby]

It makes you feel hunched and chased.

[Dominic]

It's like a nightmare completely. It does, yeah, exactly that. You're kind of rushing for cover, but there's no cover to be found. And that element of being the villains using technology against you is such a crucial element of any modern thriller. So anybody who's watched a Bond film, the Jason Bourne films I mentioned slow horses, you know, think how often they're using technology of one kind or another to track somebody, to chase somebody, or being chased themselves. They've all taken that idea from this book, which is the first one to do it. And actually the villains, talking of the villains, that brings us to another element, another element that Buchan has basically invented. And this is the nature of the villains. So in King Solomon's minds or in Walter Scott or Robert Louis Stevenson or whatever, villains often tend to be kind of embodiments of ancient evil of one kind or another, or they're kind of very, very backward looking. The thing about this is the villains are modern people and their villainy comes from the newspaper headlines of the day. So rather like in a Bond film when Bond goes to see M or something and M explains what's going on in the news. Well, we're tracking this guy who's a businessman and he's probably a bad guy or whatever here. The first chapter, a lot of it is an information dump about the geopolitical background, about the assassination, all of that. And that's something that readers would have found really, really familiar in 1915, knowing, as they did how the assassination of Franz Ferdinand had led to the First World War.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I'd never really thought about it from that perspective. The fact that they're reading it so soon after he was writing it, that is, you know, he was writing those histories of the First World War as the First World War was going on. It must have been so str to read an imitation of real life events in the pages of a thriller. I wonder how it warped people's imaginations. I bet it did play with people's imaginations, the invasion, fear and all that, I guess.

[Dominic]

Imagine if you read a thriller now about Vladimir Putin and the plot to invade Ukraine or something.

[Tabby]

That would be an equivalent, I guess. Yeah, but then there's an element of the book that I think modern readers would find very unsettling. And this is where Scudder explicitly blames the plot and the conspiracy and everything that's going on on the Jews. Because when he first explains the assassination plot to Hannay, he says the Jew is behind it. If you're on the biggest kind of a job and are bound to get the real boss, 10 to 1 you are brought up against a little white faced Jew in a bath chair with an Eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir. He is the man who is ruling the world just now. Classic conspiracy theory, isn't it? And he has his knife in the empire of the Tsar because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one horse location on the Volga.

[Dominic]

You're dead right. It's a classic conspiracy theory that Scudder is telling Hannay. And when you first read it, and I have to put my hands up here and say I'm as culpable as anybody. When you first read it, you think to yourself, oh, John Buchan, you've really let yourself down.

[Tabby]

I thought at this time, without the context, without understanding, I was like, oh,

[Dominic]

so sort of casual reader at this point. You think, gosh, this is reflecting this sort of antisemitism that was so common in the early 20th century. You know, maybe Buchan's just a product of his time, blah, blah, blah. You're quite wrong actually. Cause Buchan is toying with you here. He's playing a trick on you. Scudder is not right. Scudder is wrong.

[Tabby]

Yes.

[Dominic]

And it later turns out Sir Walter Bullivant, the head of the Foreign Office, says, oh, Scudder had a massive beer in his bonnet about Jewish conspiracies.

[Tabby]

He was a bit of a nutter, Scudder. He's not like a martyr to the course of justice and the saving of Britain or whatever he said. But he is a nutter.

[Dominic]

No, he has uncovered a plot, but it's not the plot that he thinks it is. He's like a crank, isn't he? And Bullivant says, oh, this is all eyewash, this stuff about the Jews. Actually Scudder has. Because he's been blinded by his own antisemitism, which is not. Not Buchan's or Hannay's antisemitism, it's Scudder's. Because of that, he's misunderstood what the real conspiracy is. And actually on John Buchan, John Buchan actually turns out to have been, I think, I mean, there's lots of stuff about that. Ursula Buchan writes about it in her biography. He seems to have actually been quite keen on the Jews. He was a Zionist. He supported the Zionist project in the 1930s.

[Tabby]

He's like one of five people or something that has had his name commemorated by.

[Dominic]

Right, exactly. He's commemorated by some Zionist institution or something as a French of the State of Israel or whatever. Anyway, the talk of conspiracies brings us to the villains. So those are not the anarchists, the Jewish anarchists of Scudder's fevered imagination. But there is a sort of paranoid side to this. So what they are. They are foreign agents hiding in plain sight and pretending to be British.

[Tabby]

And clearly in a very camp manner.

[Dominic]

In a very camp manner. I know.

[Tabby]

I can't help seeing they're like a

[Dominic]

kind of a German caricature of what a. How British people would behave.

[Tabby]

Totally.

[Dominic]

And obviously what this reflects is it's n. There's a kind of general panic about German spies. But actually this is. I was thinking about how influential this is because we mentioned Bond. In Ian Fleming's books, the villains are often foreigners pretending to be British.

[Tabby]

And gentlemen as well.

[Dominic]

Gentlemen. They're pretending to be posh. Exactly. Or Sir Hugo Drax in Moonraker. In the Book of Moonraker. I mean, in the film is slightly different, but you're right, there are always people who are sort of like. So in Goldfinger. Goldfinger is not. He tries to dress as a gentleman, he tries to behave as a gentleman, but he's actually boorish and vulgar and, you know, he's. And that gives him away. And this is the same thing here, isn't it?

[Tabby]

They always have a tick, a physical tick or a tell that gives them away. You know, it could be cashmere cardigans or glasses or.

[Dominic]

The cashmere cardigans thing is mad, because first of all.

[Tabby]

Or checkered shirts. It could be anything like this.

[Dominic]

Okay. Just on the cashmere cardigans. I don't own a cardigan. This is like the Tweed Slander. This is the tweed Slander again.

[Tabby]

Sorry. Cashmere V necks. Cool.

[Dominic]

I don't see what's problematic about a cashmere V neck. Explain to me what's wrong with the cashmere V neck.

[Tabby]

Nothing.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Come on.

[Dominic]

Fashion consultant.

[Tabby]

I think. I think it's great. But to get back on track, the chief villain of Blackstone, of the Blackstone conspiracy, in this, Scudder warns. I actually find this very sinister. Scudder warns Hannay. He's an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk. And I actually think, you know, we said that this isn't either villains of Bride or Haggard or whatever who are sort of have this primal, supernatural malice to them. And that is true of the villains of this. They are rooted in the real world. But I do think there's almost something slightly supernatural about that. It's like the villains in the Moonstone of Brisingerman or something. And anyway, it's this that gives him away. And so when Hannah Walks into his trap, improbably, arguably, where he walks into his cottage by mistake in the Highlands. He realizes that this is the man that Scudder has warned him about because he sees his eyes hood. What happens when one's eyes hood?

[Dominic]

I think I've got slightly hooded eyes, actually, Terry.

[Tabby]

Do you? Okay, yeah. Classic Bond villain.

[Dominic]

So I think it's where your eyelids are not really very visible.

[Tabby]

Okay.

[Dominic]

So if you look at me now. Yeah, I mean, you can see my eyelids now, but often you can't. Honestly, that's what my wife claims.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Anyway.

[Tabby]

You should just wear an eye mask.

[Dominic]

I mean, how bad is that, by the way, that he walks into this guy's house by accident and then the guy has hooded eyes. He says, oh, my God, this is obviously the chief villain, because actually quite a few people have quite hooded eyes.

[Tabby]

I actually think it's quite creepy because he's also very gentlemanly and he kind of says, I will help you, Mr. Hannay. Come into my lair. And then he's trapped. But then the thing that's slightly dents his malice is how easily he's convinced to doubt Hannay's identity. Because the minute Hannay puts on a Cockney accent and pretends to be someone else, he's like, hmm, yeah, exactly.

[Dominic]

He's very. You know in the trip, when they're doing impressions of scaramanga. Come, come, Mr. Bond. You enjoy killing just as much as I do.

[Tabby]

Totally. He is smoking. Smoking a cigar as Bond walks in.

[Dominic]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tabby]

But the passage is, which I find quite unnerving is as he spoke, his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall a little over his keen grey eyes in a flash. The phrase of Scudders came back to me when he had described the man he most dreaded in the world. He had said that he could hood his eyes like a hawk, look to Sambrook. Then I saw that I had walked straight into the enemy's headquarters.

[Dominic]

See, that's a nice detail. But apart from that, the villains are quite underdeveloped, aren't they? We don't really know their names. We don't know anything about them. Does this guy with the hooded eyes even have a name? I don't think he does, no. Never.

[Tabby]

But in a way, though, that makes him a sort of a more frightening shadowy figure, I think.

[Dominic]

The more fun characters, obviously the sort of cameo. So each chapter brings in a new kind of mad character that Hane meets. Who's your favorite? Of course your favorite is somebody very posh.

[Tabby]

So my favorite is this guy called Marmaduke Jopley, Marmee. And Hanne describes this bloke as an offense to creation. And he's this upper class London stockbroker. He kind of personifies everything that Hanay has grown so bored and tired of. You know, urban social climbing, parties, superficial frippery, all this. He's a chin so, you know, sort of a posh lout. He's a crawler.

[Dominic]

He's a red trouser man. He wears a cordycep.

[Tabby]

He doesn't look good in red trousers. He wears a corsip. He wears tweed. He loves a bloody bull. He loves polo. So Hannah steals his car from him in order to make his escape. And he goes, good God, the murderer. And then. And Hannah's very cool here, very cool indeed. He says, I'm gonna wring your neck. Savvy? So obviously he comes out of this very well, and Marmee comes out of it very badly. And it's just a total pastiche of kind of a very posh public school boy. Who's your favorite?

[Dominic]

Well, Sir Henry. It's the Liberal candidate. So Sir Henry is slightly Bertie Worcester. Ish, isn't he?

[Tabby]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Dominic]

He's like Bertie Worcester with Zach Polanski's politics. And he says to Hannay, arrives. Oh, he beats Hannay, and he says, my God, a colonial. My God, you're the very man I've been praying for. Are you by any blessed chance, a free trader? And basically it's free trade versus tariff reform, which is the big political issue of the early 1900s. And this guy is very idealistic, and he gets Hannay to come and give a speech for him. And Hannay despises this guy's politics and basically puts him right, doesn't he? He converts to Harry. He converts him from his liberalism into something more like Toryism, which isn't much. No, it doesn't take much. Basically, Hannay just says to him, look here, the Germans are bad people and we should arm and stand up to them. And this guy says, oh, well, in

[Tabby]

that case, because he doesn't actually know much about the politics about which he's preaching.

[Dominic]

Well, this is the thing, you see, it's political satire, obviously, but Buchan is such a good natured writer. You said earlier on, didn't you, when you were talking about him at Oxford, that he wasn't very partisan. No, he's such a sort of generous, spirited writer that rather than. It's not like one of my Daily Mail rants where I would portray the Other side as absolutely malign and demented.

[Tabby]

Spitting poison with everyone. Exactly.

[Dominic]

There's no poison in this at all. Like Sir Harry is just a little bit naive.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And a bit thick. And he helps Hannay enormously, actually.

[Dominic]

Well, everybody helps Hannay, don't they? John Keegan says of the whole book. The Buchan firmament is peopled by characters who are instinctively patriotic, romantically unselfish and ready at a moment's notice to abandon everyday duty to do service to the cause. And so for readers in the First World War, they're reading about this spy story in which innkeepers and road workers and milkman will do their bit to help the hero because they're kind hearted, they're patriotic, you know, all of this and it's sort of stirring, I think.

[Tabby]

But in a way, Hannay himself is just as noble and he's always. He's so very able because, you know, he's called upon to make a speech at the last moment, he can do it. He's called upon to dress up and pretend to be someone else at the last moment, he can do it. He can survive on a ration of stale biscuits over the course of two days and he can do it. And I think that the successful failure of this book, it hinges on him. And I think that Hannay as the hero is probably Buchan's most influential innovation. You know, as we said, he'd originally planned to write a detective story. But Richard Hannay is of course not a detective. He's far from it. He's a very ordinary man. It's not what he does does. He's not brilliant in any way. He doesn't investigate the murder that kicks it all off. He doesn't even really investigate the conspiracy. He does puzzle about it, but it's not the point. It's not. He's on the run. Essentially, his priority is to escape the authorities, to escape the Blackstone. And above all, he's a man of physical action. He is so very physically robust. And obviously this is a big contrast to one of the other great heroes of the age who we've already spoken about, and that's Sherlock Holmes. Because Hannay has none of his qualities. We're told he's been in the British Army Intelligence, but he's not especially clever. He's just an ordinary bloke, really. He's exceptionally ordinary, but very capable, very resourceful and it's by which he actually does some pretty bonkers things, doesn't he?

[Dominic]

Well, the plan. The plan to hide in Scotland is mad.

[Tabby]

Yeah. He has a night to think it over and he settles upon on the open air of the Scottish Highlands rather than the hustle and bustle of the streets of London. So he's much more likely to be spotted. And he does really flamboyant, ostentatious things like stealing cars that draw attention to himself and keeps doing things that means he can be tracked. Like also, if you're on the run. If you're on the run, why would you run straight into a cottage? High risk. Seriously high risk.

[Dominic]

Yeah. I mean, obviously Hannah's plan is he hasn't thought it through. Because if you're on the run, you would disguise yourself and then you'd go somewhere in London where you couldn't be tracked. He goes to a place and steals a car where, you know, a plane from above can see his car. Cause it's the only car for miles around or whatever in the Scottish Lowlands.

[Tabby]

He's likable. He's very likable.

[Dominic]

He's very likable. He's very brave, isn't he?

[Tabby]

He's hardy.

[Dominic]

He's an engineer, isn't he? He's quite modern. He's not like Quatermain in Rider Haggard. In King Solomon's Mind, he's just an adventurer. Hannay uses his ingenuity and his professional skills. So for example, when he's locked in by the villains because he knows about mining explosives, he's able to trigger an explosion that will enable him to escape the house. He's a fun character. And I think the key thing about him is what you said, his ordinariness. He's one of us. So in that respect he's actually quite like a lot of Alfred Hitchcock heroes when they're on the run. They're just kind of everyman. They're kind of ordinary people. And you can see why for people in the trenches in 1915 who think of themselves as ordinary, you know, we're just doing our bit for our country in the First World War. That's what he is. I think the other thing about him, it's interesting how he's a slight outsider, I think. So he's not that posh. He's a self made, professional man. Because he's a mining engineer. He is not English. I mean, it's really such an important part of this. He's Scottish.

[Tabby]

Yeah, well, I mean, that's part of the reason that he sneers at and looks down on the likes of Marmaduke, who I mentioned, because he's your classic upper class Englishman. And Hannay is more than that. He's an outsider. And there's something slightly superior about him. His physicality. Something about his physicality is much more robust than your average Englishman.

[Dominic]

I completely agree. And that's where the combination of Scotland and Africa is so important to his character. So the Scottishness is basically kind of Walter Scott outdoorsy history, the landscape. We're told that his father took him to South Africa when he was a boy, I think when he was 6. And he's never been back. He's grown up outdoors on the veld adventures in watering holes with animals or whatever they do.

[Tabby]

It's also a handy literary device though, because whenever he finds himself in a corner, it's not entirely improbable. Cause he say, ah, but this reminds me of the time that I was hunting on the veldt or svelte or whatever it is. And it means that he's got something up his sleeve which means he can wriggle out again.

[Dominic]

Exactly. Now where I think this is so influential is this is James Bond and Embryo. Because James Bond, Bond, half Scottish, half Swiss, James Bond in the Fleming books, he's always blathering on about how much he despises modern Britain. Basically, Bond is always saying, like 1950s Britain is very decadent and everybody's gay and he doesn't like it. And all of this, a lot of which not surprisingly, is not in the films.

[Tabby]

No, but also they have the same kind of masculine cynicism to them. You know, they're never shocked, they're never rattled. They kind of smile and go, you know, it's like, do you expect me to talk? You know. And they're just never up against a wall really.

[Dominic]

But Bond is much more sardonic and cynical than Hannay is. Hannay is good hearted. Whereas James Bond certainly in the books is more as a hardened.

[Tabby]

Sneering, I suppose. Hardened, yeah.

[Dominic]

So you can see why people think this is so massively influential because especially this character. I mean, the one thing that the element of spy thrillers, it doesn't have is sexual. So Buchan just isn't interested in that. There's no romance, there's no love interest. This is a book for an age of kind of male camaraderie and stuff, isn't it? I think. And he would probably think that that would just get in the way, I guess.

[Tabby]

It's so interesting though, because obviously this is. Buchan kind of thought of this as a romance, but it's not a romance in the sense that we would think about it where it's, you know, romantic or has lovers or anything like that. I suppose it's romance in its sort of chivalric derring do or something like that. Maybe it's the Walter Scott inspiration.

[Dominic]

Yeah, a little bit. And in later books, Hannay has like a little posse, a sort of Avengers style group. So there's a guy called San Die Arbuthnot who's a master of disguise and there's a couple of other characters. There's a South African kind of tracker called Peter Pienaar and they all sort of team up and they defeat the Germans in various adventures or whatever. And that's a slight sort of Avengers assemble element to it, I think. So anyway, it's hugely influential for all these reasons, on Bond, on Hitchcock, on all of this kind of stuff. But what about in its own terms? Let's get to our verdict. Does it stand up? I mean, it's very short. You can read it. You could probably read it in an evening. Is that an evening well spent, do you think? Does it still work as an adventure story?

[Tabby]

Yeah, I think that is a fantastic way to spend an evening. It is. And especially, you know, if you read it over the course of an evening, because it reads best when read consistently. It's jumping in and jumping out. That can be a little bit off putting because the implausibility or whatever it is, or the jumping around, I don't know, you lose the thread a little bit. The first three quarters are just so very enjoyable. You know, the hiding, the element of the chase. I love the fact that his, you know, when he looks over the crest of the Highlands and sees his trackers closing in on him. I love all that. It just lost me a bit with that final chapter. It's so rushed. I didn't entirely get what was going on.

[Dominic]

The bizarre thing where he tracks them down. This is not a massive spoiler. He tracks them down, villains to this sort of seaside house. They're playing tennis. He invites himself in. They dinner together.

[Tabby]

Yeah, exactly. And he starts doubting himself and we're like. As the reader, you're like, oh, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know it's them. It's the same number of people. You got the bloke with the hooded eyes and. And. But it's because they're playing tennis and wearing, you know, little white skirts or whatever and frolicking camp wearing skirts.

[Dominic]

I mean, they're all men.

[Tabby]

No, just in my head they are. It's all so calm, honestly.

[Dominic]

But also the final.

[Tabby]

This is good fun. Yeah.

[Dominic]

The final action is done and dusted in about four paragraphs.

[Tabby]

Literally four paragraphs.

[Dominic]

It's literally as if someone said to John Buchan, you got to be finished in five minutes. He was like, oh, well, you know. So.

[Tabby]

Yeah. And also, I'm still not entirely clear on what actually happens. Do they. Do they commandeer? I don't know. I don't want to spoil it for people. So because of that and also the fact that the villains have, I mean, zero characterizations. They're just out there, outlines of people, and it's not, for me, as thrilling as Sherlock Holmes. Actually, I'm gonna give it a seven. I've upped my. My mark.

[Dominic]

Because actually, in the course of doing this, I've dropped my mark.

[Guest/Additional Narrator]

Really?

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

No way. I've upped mine by 0.5.

[Dominic]

Well, I've had to drop mine by a point because I was thinking while we were recording, probably a bit generous giving it an eight. So I'm actually gonna give it a seven as well.

[Tabby]

Okay.

[Dominic]

Because I think I gave the Woman in white an 8.

[Tabby]

You did.

[Dominic]

And I think the Woman in White is a more satisfying thriller than the 39 steps. However, I'm not dissing the 39 steps, so I'm deducting marks for. I think it's probably not as thrilling as you would think. It's more amusing at times, isn't it?

[Tabby]

It is definitely amusing when he's giving

[Dominic]

a speech for the Liberal candidate or whatever, or when he's exchanging banter with the innkeeper.

[Tabby]

That could be PG Wodehouse, don't you think?

[Dominic]

Yes, it could.

[Tabby]

Bertie getting pulled in to have to do a speech for the Liberal.

[Dominic]

That's exactly what it is. There is a slight element of PG Wodehouse. I mean, this sounds like a mad comparison, but some of the situations are slightly PG Woodhouse, like being invited to country house parties and being very awkward.

[Tabby]

Is there a shade of Roger Expode about Richard Hannay?

[Dominic]

Wow.

[Tabby]

No. The physicality of the man.

[Dominic]

No, never. I can't believe that. I think there's more.

[Tabby]

I just want to get all of the wires in your brain.

[Dominic]

I think Richard Hannay is more Jeeves.

[Tabby]

Yeah, that's actually a fantastic shout.

[Dominic]

He's more Jeeves. Anyway, so I'm deducting Marx for. It's probably not as high adrenaline, not as tense as I thought it would be. I agree the final act is underwhelming. I agree. The Villains, if a villain had a name, I feel like would be a better book.

[Tabby]

However, the hooded eyes.

[Dominic]

I'm giving it massive credit for the opening chapter in the cliffhanger, which is brilliant. The chase in Scotland is great. I'm also giving it marks for being so influential and creating so many great spy stories that have come afterwards, and adventure stories.

[Tabby]

The final thing to say before we tell people what's coming up, this is a great lining the path, if you will. This is like the drummer boy. Although it's not just a drummer boy, but to our episode that we'll be doing in the next couple of months at some point on James Bond. Yeah.

[Dominic]

We've got. Is it Goldfinger?

[Tabby]

We're doing Goldfinger. Goldfinger, yeah.

[Dominic]

Yeah. But actually. So that's to come. Let's talk about what else has to come.

[Tabby]

We've got My Brilliant Friend by Eleanor Ferrante. We've got A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. We've got For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.

[Dominic]

By popular demand.

[Tabby]

By popular demand. Also by popular demand. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. We've got Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. And we have got Lord of the Flies by William Gaultier. Gosh, so many tasty, tasty lineups.

[Dominic]

Yeah, very tasty. Brilliant. All right, before I catch my train to Scotland, because I'm actually on the run myself.

[Tabby]

You wish, yeah.

[Dominic]

If only my life was that exciting. Actually, do you know what? It is quite exciting, because I'm a member of this great book club, and I am.

[Tabby]

What book club is this, Dominic?

[Dominic]

I am thinking that lots of our listeners may have thoughts about the book club and may want to be part of it.

[Tabby]

And if they did, what would they have to do to express those thoughts and be part of a supportive and intellectually stimulating community?

[Dominic]

We are launching a thing called Book Club Notes, and that will be a weekly newsletter. It will be like talking points about the books. It'll be book recommendations. There'll be insights from you, from members of the book club audience, members of our book club community, and that will be delivered to people's inboxes every Saturday morning. It also have tips if you want to create your own book club away from the show or connected to the show or whatever, how you do it, and some ideas for what books you could do and all that kind of thing. So lots of fun things. And Tabby, how can. Well, you know more about this than I do, don't you?

[Tabby]

To become a part of this wonderful club, all you need to do is click on the episode, there'll be the title. Underneath the title, you have an episode description, and then there will be a link and all you need to do is click on that and you can sign up for this wonderful new newsletter. Better.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

All right.

[Dominic]

Bye everybody.

[Guest/Additional Narrator]

Bye.

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