'W[ordsworth] copied a set of extracts from Buchanan into the Wordsworth Commonplace Book [Dove Cottage MS 26] ... probably between mid-March and 10 June 1807.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'It is equally possible for the same reader to adopt different frames for the same story, relishing it on one level while seeing through the claptrap on another. In his youth Aneurin Bevan enjoyed the Magnet and Gem surreptitiously (his father forbade them) and devoured H. Rider Haggard at the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library. But during the 'Phoney War' he lambasted the government's stupidly optimistic predictions in precisely the same terms: "Immediately on the outbreak of war, England was given over to the mental level of the Boys' Own Paper and the Magnet..." In 1944 Bevan freely admitted that "William le Queux, John Buchan and Phillips Oppenheim have always been favourites of ours in our off-moments. Part of their charm lies in their juvenile attitude".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Aneurin Bevan Print: Book
'1943 My Favourite:
Books: "How Green Was my Valley", "Witch in the Wood".
Authors: T.H.White, Hugh Walpole
Poems: "Christabel", "Lotus Eaters"
Writers: Shaw, Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Kipling had now been supplemented with Henty, Ballantyne, Rider Haggard and John Buchan, all with their own tales of imperial derring-do to tell theimpressionable young colonial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'Well, I've read John Buchan's books before. That's the reason.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
'He said, handing me a document, ?Here is the report on your novel.? I read it. It was very laudatory on all counts, & quite free from fault finding except as to one trifling & quite inessential point. There was a rider that in John Buchan?s opinion it would not be popular. Lane said, I will publish your novel.?
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett
'I prefer to say nothing critical about John Buchan's story'.
Hence follow more than twenty lines of quite strong and pointed, almost entirely negative, criticism.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'Finished reading "The Northern Muse", arranged by John Buchan. A fine anthology - yet one must admit that our greatest poems are ballads by unknown men. If a choice had to be made, we could not sacrifice the ballad corpus even for Burns or Dunbar. Here all the passions and pains of humanity stark clear from the shadow of individuality. Here are the poems of Everyman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Transcript of interview: 'My father introduced me to the Forsyte Saga and I read all of that. Hunting Tower was the first John Buchan I read. John Dickson Carr – I loved his books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene” Northcourt Avenue. 31st March 1942. S. A. Reynolds in
the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
4. The evening was devoted to miscellaneous readings as follows:
from: Autobiography by Eric Gill read by Muriel Stevens
The Lost Peace by Harold Butler [read by] F. E. Pollard
Letters of Gertrude Bell [read by] Isabel Taylor
Florence through Aged Eyes by H. M. Wallis [read by] H. R. Smith
Shepherds Life by W. H. Hudson [read by] L. Dorothea Taylor
Triolets by T. B. Clark [read by] S. A. Reynolds
Sick Heart River by John Buchan [read by] Margaret Dilks
[Signature of] M Stevens May 4th. 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'Here I have been reading any amount of rubbish:
among them (the rubbishes) two quite admirable
shockers by John (Prester) Buchan: THE POWERHOUSE
and THE THIRTY NINE STEPS. Both cheap editions by
Blackwood and excellent fun. I wish I could write
shockers. I worship them. Then a very clever
sevenpenny (Heinemann) The Divine Fire by May
Sinclair, which might have been excellent if
people didn't TALK so much. I hate people to say
the same thing twice over ... By this mail I shall
send you the first half of MARCHING ON TANGA ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Brett Young Print: Book
'Here I have been reading any amount of rubbish:
among them (the rubbishes) two quite admirable
shockers by John (Prester) Buchan: THE POWERHOUSE
and THE THIRTY NINE STEPS. Both cheap editions by
Blackwood and excellent fun. I wish I could write
shockers. I worship them. Then a very clever
sevenpenny (Heinemann) The Divine Fire by May
Sinclair, which might have been excellent if
people didn't TALK so much. I hate people to say
the same thing twice over ... By this mail I shall
send you the first half of MARCHING ON TANGA ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Brett Young Print: Book
