The Earnestness of Being Important

P.N. Furbank

• John Buchan: A Memoir by William Buchan
  Buchan and Enright, 272 pp, £9.95, May 1982, ISBN 0 907675 03 4
• The Best Short Stories of John Buchan, Vol. II edited by David Daniell
  Joseph, 240 pp, £8.50, June 1982, ISBN 0 7181 2121 X

The nice thing about John Buchan is that he was on the side of books. He thought, it is true, that he ought to have been a Guardian, shaping the Empire, or dominating Cabinets, or, at worst, ‘a power behind the throne’. However, after his spell in Milner’s ‘Kindergarten’, the nation didn’t seem to want him in the Guardian line, so he did the next best thing and became an entertainer. And with what success! There were, above all, his own thrillers: he went on producing them, roughly once a year, through thick and thin, with honourable zest, when political or proconsular ambitions might have whispered to him to desist. Then there was Nelson’s (Seven-penny) Library, of which he was to a large extent the creator, and which must rank in significance with Penguin Books and the Everyman Library. It took some vision, as well as business talent, to bring together A. E. W. Mason, George Douglas, Raffles, Gissing, Henry James and Jack London in the same series, and in the name of pleasure. One sees that the middlebrow had still not quite secured its grasp upon Britain.