Background to 39 Steps

Background

When John Buchan (1875 – 1940) wrote the novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915, he called it a “shocker, where the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible.” With secret ciphers, German conspiracies, ruthless foreign agents, and chance encounters, it fit this description: however, the book was written out of boredom as Buchan was confined to his bed in the winter of 1914 as he recovered from an ulcer. The Thirty-Nine Steps pits protagonist Richard Hannay, an ordinary guy, against a network of German spies preparing to storm Great Britain. The story can be seen as the battle between Good (the allies as represented by Hannay) and Evil (Germany and the Ottoman Empire as represented by the character of Professor Jordan). In 1935, the same year that author John Buchan became the Governor General of Canada,

 Alfred Hitchcock directed a film adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps, adding a love interest to the story. Alfred Hitchcock was a master of mystery and suspense. His films usually centred on either murder or espionage, with deception, mistaken identities and chase sequences complicating the plot. His film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps is no exception, including one of Hitchcock’s common themes of an innocent man, mistakenly suspected or accused of a crime, who must then track down the real perpetrator in order to clear himself.

John Buchan

The writer John Buchan was born the son of a clergyman in Perth, Scotland in 1875. He attended Glasgow and Oxford Universities, and started to publish his fiction whilst there. His career was as a barrister and later a very successful Civil Servant in the diplomatic corps. He ended up living in Canada as Governor-General and was honored with the title Baron Tweedsmuir. He wrote his stories primarily for his own entertainment, and The 39 Steps was begun during an illness in 1914 and completed 1915. Richard Hannay, hero of The 39 Steps, went on to feature in many later novels.

During WW1, and therefore at the time of this novel’s genesis, Buchan was a skilled propagandist for the British government. He will have been acutely aware of the atmosphere of mistrust and double-crossing pervasive during the period. The spy novel is the perfect way to express such fears of infiltration by the enemy, a key tool in the propagandist armory. In this context, one where the old world order is collapsing, and where central Europe is fighting the Allied powers, the novel The 39 Steps can be seen as a straightforward battle between good (the allies as represented by Hannay) and Evil (Germany and the Ottoman Empire as represented by professor Jordan).

About the Book

The Thirty-Nine Steps is one of the earliest examples of the 'man-on-the-run' thriller archetype subsequently adopted by Hollywood as an often-used plot device. In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Buchan holds up Richard Hannay as an example to his readers of an ordinary man who puts his country’s interests before his own safety. The story was a great success with the men in the First World War trenches. One soldier wrote to Buchan, "The story is greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells, and all that could make trench life depressing."