Thirty-nine steps to an unlikely theatrical triumph Play that began life in draughty Yorkshire church halls with four actors, a stuffed dog and a very large sheet, takes Broadway by storm ...

John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps at breakneck speed in 1914, while suffering from the stomach ulcer that would dog him for the rest of his life. He was staying in a nursing home by the ...

1. John Buchan, a young civil servant in colonial South Africa, publishes The Thirty-nine Steps in 1915. In the book, Richard Hannay, a former “soldier of adventure,” is framed for a spy’s ...

The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan.. Movie makers seemed to love this book and there have been several film and television versions, beginning with that of Alfred Hitchcock in 1935.

John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, which was published in novel rather than serial form 100 years ago, has a good claim to be the first ever thriller.. It did not arrive out of nowhere – in ...