611 John Buchan (with Ursula Buchan) | My Last Book with Marsha Gordon | A Hemingway Letter

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

Arts, Books, History

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2024

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scottish writer John Buchan is perhaps best known for his pioneering thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, the source material for one of Alfred Hitchcock's first great films. But as his biographer (and granddaughter) Ursula Buchan tells Jacke, Buchan was far from a one-hit wonder. John Buchan wrote more than a hundred books of fiction and non-fiction and a thousand newspaper and magazine articles - and he was just getting started. Ursula's book Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan depicts the remarkable life of this twentieth-century writer (and scholar, antiquarian, barrister, journal editor, war correspondent, member of parliament, director of wartime propaganda, Governor-General of Canada, and more!). PLUS Jacke reads a special letter by Ernest Hemingway, and Marsha Gordon (Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglamorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.
0:07.0	Hello. It seems appropriate as we come off the heels of our look at literary fame with Cast
0:15.6	Sunstein to be taking a look at this man, John Buckin.
0:19.9	For years I knew one thing about him.
0:22.4	He was the author of the 39 Steps, which I knew is the book that Alfred Hitchcock made into probably his first truly great film, the first Hitchcock film that feels Hitchcock in.
0:36.1	That movie has a chase scene across Scotland
0:38.8	and some light romantic banter,
0:41.3	very witty, mixed in with the thrills.
0:44.1	It's the template for The Lady Vanishes and North by Northwest
0:49.1	and all of their progeny.
0:52.4	I liked the movie so much, the 39 steps, that I bought the book, and I read it.
0:57.0	And now and then I'd hear that John Buckin was a prolific writer, I think I read about him once that he could read two books on any subject
1:05.1	and then write a book on that subject that was better than either of those two books.
1:10.0	In the 39 steps he has a kind of joy in his prose and his storytelling that propels the book forward.
1:18.9	If you like, let's say John Grisham or David Balducci then you're probably looking back to
1:26.3	Robert Ludlam and to Ian Fleming and if you keep reaching back you you'll run
1:31.2	into Graham Green and Eric Ambler and keep going and you will find John
1:36.2	Bucken. That's the lineage he's in. I'm not sure if he really has a predecessor,
1:41.6	although Robert Lewis Stevenson is probably looking up from his chair and saying,
1:47.8	what am I, Jack chopped haggis?
1:50.3	Back to Buckin. Yes, the 39 steps, which has never been out of print for the past hundred years.
1:58.0	But Buckin wrote more than a hundred bucks and a thousand articles for newspapers and magazines.
	...

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