Book description
In
Greenmantle
(1916) Richard Hannay, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps
, travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an
Islamic Messiah. He is joined by three more of Buchan's heroes: Peter
Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron, the American determined
to fight the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot, Greenmantle himself, modelled
on Lawrence of Arabia. The intrepid four move in disguise through
Germany to Constantinople and the Russian border toface their enemies:
the grotesque Stumm and the evil beauty of Hilda von Einem. John
Buchan was born in Perth. His first success as an author came with
Prester John
in 1910, followed by a series of adventure thrillers, or 'shockers' as
he called them, all characterized by their authentically rendered
backgrounds, romantic characters, their atmosphere of expectancy and
world-wide conspiracies, and the author's own enthusiasm. There are
three main heroes: Richard Hannay, whose adventures are collected in
The Complete Richard Hannay
; Dickson McCunn, the Glaswegian provision merchant with the soul of a
romantic, who features in Huntingtower, Castle Gay
and The House of the Four Winds;
and Sir Edward Leithen, the lawyer who tells the story of John
MacNab and Sick Heart River
, John Buchan's final novel.
