Greenmantle continues the thrilling adventures of Richard Hannay. The story takes Hannay from convalescence following the Battle of Loos, back to London for a vital meeting at the Foreign Office and thence on a top-secret mission across war-torn German-occupied Europe.His mission; to neutralise and destroy a cunning and potentially devastating plot to foment Holy War in the Islarnic Near East, which could ignite a powder-keg and shake the balance of world power and the course of war. Hannay is assisted by three intrepid companions:the suave, dashing, exotic and devastatingly romantic Sandy Arbuthnot, the American-John Scantlebury Blenkiron, and the South African Boer Scout-Peter Pienaar.

In Greenmantle John Buchan clearly asserts his mastery of the genre of the espionage thriller, by drawing on his wide first-hand knowledge of the worlds of politics and secret intelligence.

JOHN BUCHAN WROTE this swashbuckling tale of high adventure between February and June 1916 when serving as a Major in the Intelligence Corps in France during the First World War. Greenmantle takes the career and character of Richard Hannay forward from the point at the end of The Thirty-Nine Steps where he was about to join the British Army. We meet him again in November 1915 in France, convalescing after the Battle ofLoos. A telegram arrives summoning Hannay back to the Foreign Office in London for urgent and dangerous undercover work. During the briefing for his mission, Sir Walter tells Hannay It is a great game, and you are the man for it, no doubt. Unlike The Thirty-Nine Steps, where Hannay operated alone,he is assisted in Greenmantle by three loyal and daring, if disparate,companions: the dashing, exotic and devastatingly romantic Sandy Arbuthnot (Greenmantle) which character is widely thought to be modelled on the traveller and adventurer - Anbrey Herbert, the American -John Scandebury Blenkiron who is dedicated to fighting the German Kaiser despite suffering, like the author, from a duodenal ulcer, and the South African Boer Scout Peter Pienaar. Buchan had served as private secretary to Lord Milner, the British High Commissioner in South Africa, from 1901-1903 and in Greenmantle draws liberally on his experiences in that country. The fearless four are tasked by British Intelligence to neutralise a secret German plan, with its echoes of the Mahdis earlier revolt in the Sudan, to invoke a Jihad or Holy War amongst Muslims in the Near East against the British.They travel independently in a thrilling journey through Germanoccupied territory and meet up in Constantinople. From there they travel to the Russo- Turkish border and take part in the thrilling military assault on the fortified town of Erzerum, which must be captured at all costs from the German commander, Stumm. The intrepidfoursome are armed with a multitude of separate skills and a great deal of pluck which they combine with the legendary might of the crack Russian Cossack cavalry, creating a splendid climax to this novel of breathtaking action and adventure.

John Buchan was born at 20 York Place, Perth, Scotland on 26th August 1875, the son of a Free Church minister. He was educated locally before going to Hutchesons Grammar School in Glasgow in 1888, Glasgow University in 1892, and Brasenose College, Oxford in 1895. He won both the Stanbope and Newdigate Prizes at Oxford in 1897, and the following year he took a First in Greats and became President of the Oxford Union Society. He went to South Africa from 1901-1903 as assistant private secretary to Lord Milner to assist in the countrys reconstruction following the Boer Wars. Having been called to the Bar in 1901 he later practised as a barrister with considerable success. He became a partner in the Edinburgh publishing house Thomas Nelson & Son in I907, entered Parliament in 1927 for Scottish Universities as a moderate Tory, was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1933 and 1934, and, on his appointment as Governor-General of Canada, was created Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield in 1935. He died, aider an accident, in Montreal on 11th February 1940. He wrote poetry and biography as well as novels, but be is best remembered for his adventure stories; the five Hannay novels, the three Gorbals Diehards books whose unlikely hero is the middle-aged and romantic Glasgow grocer Dickson McCunn, and the two Sir Edward Leithen stories John Mcnab and Sick Heart River.

A Mission is Proposed

The Gathering of the Missionaries

Peter Pienaar

Adventures of Two Dutchmen on the Loose

Further Adventures of the Same

The Indiscretions of the Same

Christmastide

The Essen Barges

The Return of the Straggler

The Garden-House of Suliman the Red

The Companions of the Rosy Hours

Four Missionaries See Light in their Mission

I Move in Good Society

The Lady of the Mantilla

An Embarrassed Toilet

The Battered Caravanserai

Trouble by the Waters of Babylon

Sparrows on the Housetops

Greenmantle

Peter Pienaar Goes to the Wars

The Little Hill

The Guns of the North