A collection of edited essays on the novelist John Buchan (1875-1940), author of, among many other works, "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (1915), "Witch Wood" (1927) and "Sick Heart River" (1940). It considers Buchan's writing and reputation from the perspective of the twenty-first century and examines Buchan's major fiction and non-fictional writing.

Introduction; Part I Cultural Roots; Chapter 1 John Buchan and Calvinism, James C. G. Greig; Chapter 2 Buchan and the Classics, Isobel Michael, Haslett; Chapter 3 'Twin Loyalties': John Buchan's England, David Goldie; Chapter 4 Buchan, Sport and Masculinity, Simon Glassock; Chapter 5 John Buchan and the Creation of the Springbok Warrior, Bill Nasson; Part II Divided Loyalties; Chapter 6 John Buchan and the South African War, Michael Redley; Chapter 7 John Buchan and the First World War: Fact into Fiction, Hew Strachan; Chapter 8 Buchan and the Pacifists, Nathan Waddell; Chapter 9 John Buchan, America and the 'British World', 1904-40, Peter Henshaw; Chapter 10 Islam and the East in John Buchan's Novels, Ahmed K. al-Rawi; Chapter 11 Conquistadors: Buchan's Businessmen, H. E. Taylor; Part III Literary Art; Chapter 12 'A Fraud Called John Buchan': Buchan, Joseph Conrad and Literary Theft, Douglas Kerr; Chapter 13 Aphrodite Rejected: Archetypal Women in Buchan's Fiction, Kate Macdonald; Chapter 14 John Buchan: Politics, Language and Suspense, Alan Riach; Chapter 15 Buchan's Supernatural Fiction, Paul Benedict Grant; Chapter 16 The Anarchist's Garden: Politics and Ecology in John Buchan's Wastelands, John Miller; Chapter 17 Tracing The Thirty-Nine Steps, Tony Williams;