John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, did not see active service in the first world war, spending it instead as a correspondent, an intelligence officer and, finally, as director of information under Lord Beaverbrook. Nevertheless, its “alien immensities” left him painfully adrift, a disorientation for which, demobbed, he sought a cure in the British countryside. Wandering its lanes helped him to reclaim the past, and thus to have hope in the future.
It is as if Tinniswood is… (View original article)