RANDOM JOTTINGS

A new version of this was heavily trailed over the Christmas period on the Beeb and while there was lots of adverse comment I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the programme and you can read my earlier post here.

My knowledge of the Thirty Nine Steps is based on the Alfred Hitchcock movie with Robert Donat and Madeline Carrol so I did not have any serious criticism to make of this latest version as I would have had no idea what I was talking about.  Mind you, I did suspect that there it was unlikely that a woman and/or romance featured in the original story, but hey you can't have a movie or a prog like this without slinging in a bit of sex and passion into the mixture (though thankfully we were spared a steamy scene – a non-consummation devoutly to be wished…), but the Beeb could not resist showing us Rupert Penry-Jones torso again.  No complaint on my part.

Anyway, this dramatisation and the following programme on Buchan (very irritating in parts with the usual BBC faux characterisation – I rant more in the earlier post) spurred me into actually reading the book for the first time and of course, I then realise why everyone moaned about the prog as it bore very little resemblance to the actual story.  The ending is different, the characters are different, no woman (of course) and the thirty nine steps of the title really quite uninteresting, not the McGuffin device of Hitchcock at all.

What was true of course was the middle section which is really something.  The lone man on the Scottish moors trying to stay clear of the evil forces chasing him down, the plane swooping over Hannay trying to stay hidden and ahead of his pursuers.  The tension of all this leaps off the pages and is the heart of the story and that which makes it so gripping.  The ending is almost a disappointment, no great climax, down beat and pragmatic and yet, seems right in its quiet satisfaction of a job well done and all the villains apprehended.

Love the style, so stiff upper lipped, Hanny is the super hero, the Britisher, the 'white man' the 'pukka sahib' who 'pitches a good yarn', who is bored on his return to England and who rather feels 'that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning'. In order to enjoy this story, the reader has to suspend all modern notions of style and expression and remember when this book was written, otherwise some of the outmoded and unacceptable attitudes will grate badly.  As I adore books written in the first part of the 20th century I am used to this suspension of criticism but it is hard now and then.

In the midst of all this though is John Buchan's clear love for his country, his patriotism (and yes, that can be used in a derogatory way nowadays) and, in particular, his love for the Scottish countryside.  Just read this:

"… beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance.  To the left and right were round shouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes but to the south there was a glimpse of high heathery mountains..'

and

"It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst.  The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean…nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted with young lambs.  All the slackness of the last four months was slipping from my bones and I stepped out like a four year old. By and by I came to a swell of moorland which dipped to the vale of a little river and a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke of a train……….at the station… the single line, a slender siding, an office, the station master's cottage and a tiny yard of gooseberries and sweet William"

Nothing fancy, no flourishes, just lovely straightforward descriptive prose.  I really enjoyed this book, but the Scottish section was the part of the story that won my heart.

I am now starting Greenmantle as I think I have quite fallen in love with Richard Hannay. Of course, closing one's eyes and imagining Rupert Penry-Jones does help, I fully admit…..