The Thirty-nine Steps

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author (and future Governor General of Canada) John Buchan, first published in 1915 by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous habit of getting himself out of sticky situations. The novel formed the basis for a number of film adaptations, notably: Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 ver... more

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author (and future Governor General of Canada) John Buchan, first published in 1915 by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous habit of getting himself out of sticky situations. The novel formed the basis for a number of film adaptations, notably: Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 version; a 1959 colour remake; a 1978 version which, though more faithful to the novel in its early stages, ends with a sequence set at the clocktower of the Palace of Westminster which bears no relation to the denouement of the novel; and a 2008 version for British television. John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was ill in bed with a duodenal ulcer, an illness which remained with him all his life. The novel was his first "shocker", as he called it — a story combining personal and political dramas. The novel marked a turning point in... less