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John Buchan

Huntingtower is a novel written by John Buchan in 1922. The first of his three Dickson McCunn books, it is set near Carrick in south west Scotland around 1920. The hero is a 55-year old grocer Dickson McCunn, who has sold his business and taken early retirement. As soon as he ventures out to explore the world, he is swept out of his bourgeois rut into bizarre and outlandish adventures, and forced to become a reluctant hero.

The story revolves around the imprisonment under false pretenses by Bolshevik agents of an exiled Russian noblewoman. The Scottish local community mobilises to uncover and thwart the conspiracy against her, and to defend the neutrality of Scotland against the Russian revolutionary struggle. A plot based on espionage and covert violence is set against the seemingly tranquil Scottish rural backdrop, a narrative device commonly found in Buchan's novels. He uses this notably in The Thirty Nine Steps. The novel contrasts the domestic characters, heroes and villains, with their more alien Russian counterparts. Huntingtower is characteristic of Buchan's novels, particularly in its class-based paternalism; its xenophobic prejudices, which are mitigated by instinctive humanity and dry humour; and its shrewd common-sense understanding of personality and motivation. We see Buchan's class based paternalism in the attitudes of various characters, from Saskia's insistence on pointing out the former status of her Russian family to Phemie Morran's lifelong loyalty to the extinct Kennedy family, to whom she was once a domestic servant.

In this novel Buchan creates characters across a broad spectrum of Scottish social classes and backgrounds, and while no one except McCunn is presented in great depth, we are given sharp and revealing character sketches of other key characters. Heritage's single handed defence of the actual tower and his attempt to free-climb away from he burning building show not only his actions but his reasons and thinking, why he is doing what he is doing. Wee Jaikie's inner life is only hinted at occasionally, but his dogged perseverance and resourcefulness come through at several moments when his interventions are important. In the final resolution of the story, a band of adventurers ranging from an injured laird and his faithful menservants to a group of semi-outcast street urchins from Glasgow have bonded and have combined to fight for a common purpose, out of belief in right and wrong, and allegiance to Scotland.

The Novel has been adapted for both movies and TV. BBC Scotland produced an adaptation which was broadcast over six episodes starting in October 1978.

The Dickson McCunn Trilogy is a set of three books by John Buchan. The novels in the trilogy are Huntingtower (1922), Castle Gay (1930) and The House of the Four Winds (1935).

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH (26 August 1875 - 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.

After a brief legal career Buchan simultaneously began both his writing career and his political and diplomatic career, serving as a private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in Southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War. Once he was back in civilian life Buchan was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction.

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The Dickson McCunn Stories

Huntingtower

Castle Gay is a novel by John Buchan. It is the second of his three Dickson McCunn books and is set in south west Scotland in the Dumfries and Galloway region in the 1920s.
Castle Gay is one half Pilgrim's Progress, one half commentary on tradition, mixed up in a splendid adventure story. It begins with a dull, timid newspaper magnate, Thomas Carlyle Craw, who finds himself kidnapped (victim of a misfired college prank) and deposited in a lodge in the remote Border mountains of Scotland. Irascible, whiny, and wholly unused to bodily exertion, he is forced to undertake a lengthy sojourn in the wilderness, by the end of which he has become a new man. But his is no tale of solitary man battling the impersonal forces of nature and finding strength to conquer deep within himself; from the outset, like Dante, he is given a guide through the scenes of humiliation. It is no hell through which he travels, but the comfortable and homely world of the Scots countryside, quick to offer him a bed by the fire and endless plates of ham and eggs. Yet this same world also offers dangers and discomfort aplenty, and with them comes slow life into the soul of the pilgrim.
The Dickson McCunn Trilogy is a set of three books by John Buchan. The novels in the trilogy are Huntingtower (1922), Castle Gay (1930) and The House of the Four Winds (1935).
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH (26 August 1875 - 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
After a brief legal career Buchan simultaneously began both his writing career and his political and diplomatic career, serving as a private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in Southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War. Once he was back in civilian life Buchan was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction.

Castle Gay

The House of the Four Winds is a novel of adventure by John Buchan, first published in 1935. It is a Ruritanian romance, and the last of his three Dickson McCunn books. The novel is set in the fictional Central European country of Evallonia in the early 1930s. It concerns the involvement of some Scottish visitors in the overthrow of a corrupt republic and the restoration of the monarchy. It is a sequel to Castle Gay, in which some Evallonians visited Scotland on a secret mission two years before the start of this novel.
At the beginning of the novel several characters formerly seen in Huntingtower and Castle Gay are about to go to Europe for the summer, for a number of different reasons: Mr McCunn going to a German Kurhaus for his health, Alison to join her parents in the Tirol, the Roylances to attend a dull conference in Geneva, Jaikie on a walking tour, Dougal on a mission for his newspaper.
While essentially a romantic adventure, the novel alludes to certain trends in European life such as post-war nationalism and the focus on democracy. Juventus resembles the German Youth Movement, and Mastrovin represents communist gangsterism.
The Dickson McCunn Trilogy is a set of three books by John Buchan. The novels in the trilogy are Huntingtower (1922), Castle Gay (1930) and The House of the Four Winds (1935).
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH (26 August 1875 - 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
After a brief legal career Buchan simultaneously began both his writing career and his political and diplomatic career, serving as a private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in Southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War. Once he was back in civilian life Buchan was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction.