Buchan’s Pathological Vitality

• The Best Short Stories of John Buchan edited by David Daniell
  Joseph, 224 pp, £7.50, May 1980, ISBN 0 7181 1906 1

David Daniell is also the author of the only full-length critical study of Buchan’s work – The Interpreter’s House (1975). Both there and here, in the introduction to this collection of 12 of Buchan’s stories, he is concerned to defend the writer against the usual accusations of anti-semitism, racism and blatant imperialism; to protest against the way he is automatically ranked with Sapper, Dornford Yates and similar figures; and to assert that he is not only worth reading (which the general public has never forgotten), but also worth reading seriously.