The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan is one of my favourite novels, and the other four books in the series (
Greenmantle,
Mr Standfast,
The Three Hostages and
The Island of Sheep are all brilliant too. The Thirty-nine Steps was written in 1915, just after the start of the war, and it's a wonderful book, a 'shocker' as John Buchan used to like calling it. It's a fictional story about the beginning of WW1. There was another story written, called
The Courts of The Morning which I'm reading right now, and it has a prologue written by Richard Hannay, but the rest of the book is about other characters who feature throughout the five books in the series
Another thing I love about the book is the language used. I've typed in the foreword for everyone to read.
TO
THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON
LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE
My dear Tommy,
You and I have long cherished an affection for that
elementary type of tale which Americans call the "dime
novel," and which we know as the "shocker"- the romance
where the incidents defythe probabilities, and march just
inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last
winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness,
and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume
is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in
memory of our long friendship, in these days when the
wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the
facts.
J.B.
"I gave half a crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer."
(The Thirty-nine Steps)