|
Myers Literary Guide:
|
The North-East
|
|
JOHN BUCHAN (1875 - 1940) England was a foreign land to Buchan when, at the age of 17, he crossed into Northumberland at Carham on the Tweed. He found to his relief that in the strip of Northumberland he covered, the landscape, people and language were much the same as in his beloved Tweeddale. A versatile writer, Buchan produced some hundred books in the course of an active public life, but he is remembered best for his adventure stories like The Thirty-Nine Steps, which often feature chases over wild country. In The Island of Sheep his characters encounter a magnificent red sunset over Teesdale before driving their Bentley along the A 69, passing through Consett and noting 'the distant glow of ironworks'. They are being pursued, but elude their enemies on the North Pennine moors. Buchan evinces a familiarity with the countryside near Hexham: 'I had tramped a good deal there when I was keen on Hadrian's Wall' . The routes into Scotland through Carter Bar or Bellingham are rejected and the company eventually proceed via 'what must be the worst roads in Britain' - drove roads - 'into the upper glens of the Tyne' and so to safety in Ettrick . Buchan conveys the exhilaration of the high Cheviots: 'Anna was in wild spirits. The sight of bent and heather intoxicated her... The curlews especially she hailed as old friends...'
|
|