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  A Journey of Little Profit -...

  John Buchan

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  The Scottish novelist John Buchan enjoyed a remarkable career as politician, historian and Governor General. He was born John Buchan on 26th August 1875 and later added 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH to his name.  
  Buchan studied at Hutchesons’ Grammar School, Glasgow and at seventeen won a scholarship to the University of Glasgow to study classics. There he began to write poetry. In 1895 he transferred to Oxford to continue his study of Classics and in 1896 ‘Sir Quixote of the Moors’ was published followed by the non-fiction ‘Scholar-Gipsies’. His prolific literary output now hardly faltered. 
  He graduated in 1900 and became the private secretary to Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner for Southern Africa and other colonies. Buchan found the same inspiration in the African landscape as he had in the Scottish Borders, and would later set many works here. Returning to London he became a partner in a publishing house, and garnered an editorial role at The Spectator. He also completed his law studies. He was called to the bar in 1901 but never practiced.  
  On 15th July 1907 Buchan married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor, the cousin of the Duke of Westminster. In 1910 he wrote ‘Prester John’, the first of a series set in South Africa.  
  In 1911 Buchan entered politics as a Unionist candidate in the Scottish Borders advocating the support of free trade, women’s suffrage, national insurance, and reducing the power of the House of Lords.  
  The Great War saw Buchan writing for the War Propaganda Bureau and as Times correspondent in France. In 1915, he published ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’, his most famous book and a follow-up Richard Hannay novel, ‘Greenmantle’, in 1916.  
  In 1916 Buchan enlisted in the Intelligence Corps which included writing speeches for Sir Douglas Haig. By 1917 he was Director of Information under Lord Beaverbrook. Buchan called it “the toughest job he ever took on”. He somehow found time to assist in a history of the war magazine. This was later published in 24 volumes: Nelson’s History of the War. 
  After the war his writing focused on historical studies. In 1927 Buchan became the Unionist Party Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities. In a speech to Parliament he said “I believe every Scotsman should be a Scottish nationalist. If it could be proved that a Scottish parliament were desirable… Scotsmen should support it.”  
  Over the next decade he continued to distinguish himself politically and in literature.  On the 1st June 1935 he became 1st Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield in the County of Oxford.  
  He was now also given the position of Governor General in Canada and resolved to travel all over Canada to gain a better insight of the country. Having crossed both length and breadth he saw the cultural shift between areas and their common ground and helped bring about a clear national Canadian identity. 
  On the 6th February 1940 he collapsed from a stroke and sustained a very serious head injury in falling. Two rounds of surgery to stabilise his condition were unsuccessful and Buchan died on the 11th February. After a state funeral in Ottawa his ashes were returned to his estate in Oxfordshire.

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  3 Stories - Set Entirely on...

  Virginia Woolf, Saki Saki, W G...

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  There is something about the number 3.    
   
  The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.   
   
  Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois.  It seems good things usually come in threes. 
   
  Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating. 
   
  From their pens to your your ears.

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  As the Crow Flies - From their...

  John Davys Beresford

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  John Davys Beresford was born on 17th March 1873.  His life was blighted by infantile paralysis which left him partially disabled. 
  After an education at Oundle school he trained to be an architect.  However, he quickly decided that his life was to be centred on a literary career.  His first offerings were in drama and as a journalist. 
  As well as being a book reviewer for the Manchester Guardian he contributed to New Statesman, The Spectator, Westminster Gazette, and the Theosophist magazine The Aryan Path.   
  His spiritual journey in early adulthood had claimed him as an agnostic, in defiance of his clergyman father.  This view he later abandoned in preference to describing himself as a Theosophist and a pacifist. 
  As well as many novels, many themed with spiritual and philosophical elements.  Beresford was also a gifted short story writer particularly across the science-fiction, horror and ghost genres. 
  All of these elements helped him to obtain a prominent place in Edwardian Literary London. 
  John Davys Beresford died on the 2nd February 1947. He was 73.

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  Chelkash by Maxim Gorky - A...

  Maxim Gorky

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  Alexei Maximovich Peshkov was born on 28th March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 
   
  Better known as Maxim Gorky he was orphaned at 11 and ran away from home at 12.  At 19 he had already attempted suicide and thereafter travelled, by foot, across the Russian Empire for 5 years. 
   
  His first book ‘Essays & Stories’ in 1898 was a sensation and so began a long career as an author of short stories, novels and plays.  Gorky saw writing as a moral and political act that would help to change the unjust world around him.  He was an ardent early advocate of the emerging Marxist movement and publicly opposed the Tsarist regime leading several times to his arrest.  
   
  In 1904 he began his own theatre but the censor banned every play and Gorky was forced to abandon the project. 
   
  But Gorky was a financially successful author, editor, and playwright and gave monies to political parties as well as for civil rights and social reform.  The brutal shooting of workers, which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions.  
   
  In 1906 he went to the United States to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. Those experiences including a scandal over travelling with his lover and not his wife deepened his contempt for the ‘bourgeois soul.’ 
   
  Gorky now moved to Capri in Italy, both for health reasons and to escape the increasingly repressive times in Russia.  
   
  An amnesty for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty saw him return to Russia in 1914. His politics remained close to the Bolshevik cause.  But soon, after the 1918 revolution, his essays referred to Lenin as a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression.  He was soon appealing to the outside world for food aid after the catastrophic crop failure. 
   
  In October 1921 Gorky returned to Italy, now in Fascist hands, and settled in Sorrento until 1932.  His health worsened with the onset of tuberculosis. 
   
  He wrote several successful books there but now decided to find an understanding with the communist regime. Stalin invited him home and his return was hailed as a major propaganda victory.  He was decorated with the Order of Lenin, and a province, a park, and various streets re-named in his honour. 
   
  But he had his faults too.  In 1933, Gorky co-edited a book on the White Sea-Baltic Canal and denied even a single prisoner died during its construction, but thousands had. As well, knowing that some Nazis were homosexual, a phrase was attributed to him that said ‘exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish’.  Although he was himself was quoting another he was decidedly homophobic. 
   
  With the increase of Stalinist repression in 1935 Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest. 
   
  Maxim Gorky died on the 18th June 1936 from pneumonia.  He was 68. 
   
  Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn of ashes at his funeral.  
   
  In Gorky’s story, a thief, Chelkash, ensnares a young man into his scheme to steal silk from a ship.  When he then sells the stolen goods he is set upon by the young accomplice.  What happens then is as unexpected as it is remarkable.

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  A Moonlight Fable

  H. G. Wells

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  In H.G. Wells' short story "A Moonlight Fable," we meet a young boy whose mother gives him a beautiful, silver-white suit, instructing him to save it for a special occasion. The boy, enchanted by the suit’s beauty, dons it one moonlit night, drawn by the desire to experience its magic. Against the surreal backdrop of the moonlit landscape, the boy embarks on a whimsical adventure, seeking freedom and transcendence. However, his innocent act of rebellion leads to an unexpected, poignant conclusion. Wells crafts a fable about the fleeting nature of beauty and the bittersweet pangs of youth, love, and loss.

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  The House In The Woods

  SULI Daniel Johnson

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  Edmund Blake is diving down a deserted road trying to escape the rigors of his life. A collection of unlikely events and irrational decisions lead him to discover a house in the woods. The house from a time long forgotten competes with him to investigate. The endeavor leads him to one terror-stricken mystery after another.

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