And it would have been on just such moors that Buchan, born the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister in Perth, in 1875, would have used this pair of John Dickson & Son 12 -bore round action ejectors.
Now they are being put up for sale by Holt’s of King’s Lynn in Norfolk in their June 5 sale with an estimate of £3000-5000.
Educated at Glasgow University, then Brasenose College, Oxford, Buchan enjoyed early literary success; Don Quixote of the Moors, his first adventure story, (then referred to as “romance novels”) was published in 1895.
His most famous creation, Richard Hannay, is the hero of five of his novels: The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Steadfast, The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep. Hannay, modelled on a young army officer named Edmund Ironside, is the ultimate Boys’ Own hero; adventurous, nationalistic, courageous and morally incorruptible.
One of Buchan’s chief admirers was the film director Alfred Hitchcock. Many of Hitchcock’s films, in common with Buchan’s books, feature innocents who, misunderstood by the law and hunted by the forces of evil, are alone and isolated – the parallels between North by Northwest (1959, starring Cary Grant) and The Thirty-Nine Steps are particularly pronounced. Hitchcock’s own production of The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) was largely responsible for bringing Buchan to the attention of American media mogul David O. Selznick.
Buchan also enjoyed a career as private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa, a Scottish Conservative MP and the director of Reuters, the news agency. The end of his career (1935 onwards) saw him move to Canada where he became the first Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield and served as Governor General of Canada until his death on February 11, 1940.
A man who shot to the top
FEW images conjure up the nail-biting adventures of John Buchan more than Richard Hannay’s flight across the grouse moors of Scotland in the author’s best-known story, The Thirty Nine Steps.
