Introduction

This essay concerns the representation of masculinities in three of the five novels by John Buchan that have as their protagonist his adventure hero Richard Hannay, beginning with The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and proceeding through Greenmantle (1916) and Mr Standfast (1919). These novels are denominated Buchan’s ‘War Trilogy’ because in their chronological dramatic time they move from the inception of the First World War to its engulfment. This essay concentrates on these three novels because the martial contexts deploy a higher valence and intensification of masculinities. Buchan himself labelled these novels ‘shockers’ because of their high quotient of exciting, breathless incident. They are, however, far more. These ‘War Trilogy’ texts have a palimpsestic basic structural template. Hannay confronts a series of male or female ‘others’ who constitute antagonism to him and to his ideologies: the Black Stone in The Thirty-Nine Steps; von Stumm, von Einem and Kaiser Wilhelm II in Greenmantle; and Graf von Schwabing/Moxon Ivery in Mr Standfast. In pursuit of his objectives, Hannay has a group of supporters, consisting of Peter Pienaar, the old Boer scout; Sandy Arbuthnot, a junior member of the Scottish aristocracy; John Scantlebury Blenkiron, an American from Indiana, who has the dual careers of secret agent and businessman; and Mary Lamington, a secret-service agent, Hannay’s handler in Mr Standfast and eventual wife.