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Dickson McCunn #2
Castle Gay
A tale of kidnapping, politics, suspense—and rugby.
274 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
About the author
John Buchan
1,447 books415 followersJohn Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) was a Scottish novelist and public servant who combined a successful career as an author of thrillers, historical novels, histories and biographies with a parallel career in public life. At the time of his death he was Governor-General of Canada.
Buchan was educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to South Africa in 1902 where he contributed to the reconstruction of the country following the Boer War. His love for South Africa is a recurring theme in his fiction.
On returning to Britain, Buchan built a successful career in publishing with Nelsons and Reuters. During the first world war, he was Director of Information in the British government. He wrote a twenty-four volume history of the war, which was later abridged.
Alongside his busy public life, Buchan wrote superb action novels, including the spy-catching adventures of Richard Hannay, whose exploits are described in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages, and The Island of Sheep.
Apart from Hannay, Buchan created two other leading characters in Dickson McCunn, the shrewd retired grocer who appears in Huntingtower, Castle Gay, and The House of the Four Winds; and the lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, who features in the The Power-House, John Macnab, The Dancing Floor, The Gap in the Curtain and Sick Heart River.
From 1927 to 1935 Buchan was Conservative M.P. for the Scottish Universities, and in 1935, on his appointment as Governor-General to Canada, he was made a peer, taking the title Baron Tweedsmuir. During these years he was still productive as a writer, and published notable historical biographies, such as Montrose, Sir Walter Scott, and Cromwell.
When he died in Montreal in 1940, the world lost a fine statesman and story-teller.
The John Buchan Society was founded in 1979 to encourage continuing interest in his life, works and legacy. Visit the website (http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk) and follow the Society on Twitter (www.twitter.com/johnbuchansoc) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/johnbuchansociety).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan and Encyclopeadia Britannica
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Buchan was educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to South Africa in 1902 where he contributed to the reconstruction of the country following the Boer War. His love for South Africa is a recurring theme in his fiction.
On returning to Britain, Buchan built a successful career in publishing with Nelsons and Reuters. During the first world war, he was Director of Information in the British government. He wrote a twenty-four volume history of the war, which was later abridged.
Alongside his busy public life, Buchan wrote superb action novels, including the spy-catching adventures of Richard Hannay, whose exploits are described in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages, and The Island of Sheep.
Apart from Hannay, Buchan created two other leading characters in Dickson McCunn, the shrewd retired grocer who appears in Huntingtower, Castle Gay, and The House of the Four Winds; and the lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, who features in the The Power-House, John Macnab, The Dancing Floor, The Gap in the Curtain and Sick Heart River.
From 1927 to 1935 Buchan was Conservative M.P. for the Scottish Universities, and in 1935, on his appointment as Governor-General to Canada, he was made a peer, taking the title Baron Tweedsmuir. During these years he was still productive as a writer, and published notable historical biographies, such as Montrose, Sir Walter Scott, and Cromwell.
When he died in Montreal in 1940, the world lost a fine statesman and story-teller.
The John Buchan Society was founded in 1979 to encourage continuing interest in his life, works and legacy. Visit the website (http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk) and follow the Society on Twitter (www.twitter.com/johnbuchansoc) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/johnbuchansociety).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan and Encyclopeadia Britannica
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 13, 2012
Castle Gay is one half Pilgrim’s Progress, one half commentary on tradition, mixed up in a splendid adventure story. It begins with a dull, timid newspaper magnate, Thomas Carlyle Craw, who finds himself kidnapped (victim of a misfired college prank) and deposited in a lodge in the remote Border mountains of Scotland. Irascible, whiny, and wholly unused to bodily exertion, he is forced to undertake a lengthy sojourn in the wilderness, by the end of which he has become a new man. But his is no tale of solitary man battling the impersonal forces of nature and finding strength to conquer deep within himself; from the outset, like Dante, he is given a guide through the scenes of humiliation. It is no hell through which he travels, but the comfortable and homely world of the Scots countryside, quick to offer him a bed by the fire and endless plates of ham and eggs. Yet this same world also offers dangers and discomfort aplenty, and with them comes slow life into the soul of the pilgrim.
However, Craw’s journey is more than a bald conversion allegory. Indeed, every journey is a bit of everything in literature. Like Innocent Smith, Craw has fared far from home and found the gift of new eyes to see the familiar as it really is. Spotting his castle from a distant hill, he realizes his home had “hitherto been for him a place without environment, like a walled suburban paradise where a city man seeks his repose….Now he was realizing that it was only a little piece of vast and delectable countryside. He had come down from bleak hills into meadows, and by contrast the meadows seemed a blessed arcady.” In the beginning, Craw lost his paradise. Now he seems to have regained it, or at least found the capacity to regain it.
The second thread woven through the story is a commentary on the old-fashioned society of lord and peasant, of nobility and humility. Throughout the narrative are portraits of garish, teetotalling hotels, chaotic politics, and towns succumbing to urban industrialism. Subtly countering them are depictions of hill shepherds, innkeepers, and aristocratic maiden aunts with strict views on deportment. Most importantly, Craw himself is representative of the new middle class that now occupies the ancient seats of power. Although he lives in a castle, he is merely a renter, a vulgarly rich newcomer. The old family is still nearby in the person of Mrs Brisbane-Brown, another of the perfectly-realized characters who populate Buchan’s stories. “In every family there are members who act as guardians of its records and repositories of its traditions. Their sole distinction is their family connection, and they take good care that the world shall not forget it.” She “read and re-read the books which she had loved from of old….She had never heard of Marcel Proust, but she could have passed a stiff examination in Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Walter Scott.” As for Mr Craw, he and “the whole world for which he stood scarcely came within the orbit of her thoughts.”
Buchan, though a fine romancer, is no sentimentalist. His portraits are carefully drawn studies obviously taken from his own experience, and the story winds up, not with the absolute triumph of one over the other, but with a conservative synthesis that accepts the fact of the newcomer, yet manages to preserve the essence of the old life. Craw limps home like that other archetypal wayfarer, Odysseus, disheveled and unrecognizable, to find his home besieged by a gang of political conspirators from post-war eastern Europe. Fresh from his trials in the wilderness, he displays (in a distinctly middle-class fashion) courage and kingliness, harries the serpent from his garden, and marries the very lady from whose thoughts he had once been so distant. Buchan seems to be saying that, although economic conditions have changed, there is no unalterable decree that the rising middle class be timid, self-indulgent, or dead to the Christian sentiments of humility and honor. Through the exercise of the same virtues they can redeem and transform the old world that died giving them birth. But before they can do so they must, like Craw, endure their forty days in the wilderness.
However, Craw’s journey is more than a bald conversion allegory. Indeed, every journey is a bit of everything in literature. Like Innocent Smith, Craw has fared far from home and found the gift of new eyes to see the familiar as it really is. Spotting his castle from a distant hill, he realizes his home had “hitherto been for him a place without environment, like a walled suburban paradise where a city man seeks his repose….Now he was realizing that it was only a little piece of vast and delectable countryside. He had come down from bleak hills into meadows, and by contrast the meadows seemed a blessed arcady.” In the beginning, Craw lost his paradise. Now he seems to have regained it, or at least found the capacity to regain it.
The second thread woven through the story is a commentary on the old-fashioned society of lord and peasant, of nobility and humility. Throughout the narrative are portraits of garish, teetotalling hotels, chaotic politics, and towns succumbing to urban industrialism. Subtly countering them are depictions of hill shepherds, innkeepers, and aristocratic maiden aunts with strict views on deportment. Most importantly, Craw himself is representative of the new middle class that now occupies the ancient seats of power. Although he lives in a castle, he is merely a renter, a vulgarly rich newcomer. The old family is still nearby in the person of Mrs Brisbane-Brown, another of the perfectly-realized characters who populate Buchan’s stories. “In every family there are members who act as guardians of its records and repositories of its traditions. Their sole distinction is their family connection, and they take good care that the world shall not forget it.” She “read and re-read the books which she had loved from of old….She had never heard of Marcel Proust, but she could have passed a stiff examination in Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Walter Scott.” As for Mr Craw, he and “the whole world for which he stood scarcely came within the orbit of her thoughts.”
Buchan, though a fine romancer, is no sentimentalist. His portraits are carefully drawn studies obviously taken from his own experience, and the story winds up, not with the absolute triumph of one over the other, but with a conservative synthesis that accepts the fact of the newcomer, yet manages to preserve the essence of the old life. Craw limps home like that other archetypal wayfarer, Odysseus, disheveled and unrecognizable, to find his home besieged by a gang of political conspirators from post-war eastern Europe. Fresh from his trials in the wilderness, he displays (in a distinctly middle-class fashion) courage and kingliness, harries the serpent from his garden, and marries the very lady from whose thoughts he had once been so distant. Buchan seems to be saying that, although economic conditions have changed, there is no unalterable decree that the rising middle class be timid, self-indulgent, or dead to the Christian sentiments of humility and honor. Through the exercise of the same virtues they can redeem and transform the old world that died giving them birth. But before they can do so they must, like Craw, endure their forty days in the wilderness.
September 19, 2018
Retired middle-aged Glasgow grocer, Dickson McCunn, first introduced in Huntingtower, returns for a second adventure in Castle Gay. This time he plays a less prominent role in proceedings (but ultimately no less significant, as it turns out). Instead, two of the group of boys known as the ‘Gorbals Die-Hards’ - Dougal and Jaikie - now young men making their way in the world, find themselves in the midst of an adventure involving a reclusive press baron and the political machinations of rival factions in the fictional central European country of Evallonia.
Unlike Huntingtower, there’s no damsel in distress but there is a besieged Scottish manor house and a gang of baddies who are not only foreigners but - even worse - possibly Bolsheviks. Throw in a few cases of mistaken identity (accidental and deliberate), some makeshift disguises, the laying of false trails and a few fortunate escapes on bicycle or on foot and you have a lighthearted entertaining adventure. Buchan also finds an opportunity to introduce a scene involving an impromptu political speech like that first seen in The Thirty-Nine Steps. As in Huntingtower, Buchan has chosen to render some of the dialogue in broad Scots, but, thankfully, in Castle Gay, this is confined to just one or two characters.
The book includes two recurring features of Buchan’s adventure stories: a villain who has a great brain but no scruples to go with it; and a female character whose attractions, along with her beauty, include tomboyish tendencies, courage, the ability to move through the countryside undetected and skills as a horsewoman. Once again Dickson McCunn plays a part in proceedings that demonstrates his calm, sensible and business-like approach to problems and that appeals to his sense of history and romance: ‘At last – at long last - his dream had come true. He was not pondering romance, he was living it...’.
Along the way, the previously mentioned reclusive press baron undergoes a sort of conversion. Shorn of the luxuries of life and the protective carapace he has built around himself, not to mention a few days’ experience of ‘roughing it’ in the Scottish countryside, he becomes a man of action rather than just populist rhetoric. ‘There were unexpected depths in him. He was a greater man than he had dreamt, and the time had come to show it.’
Unlike Huntingtower, there’s no damsel in distress but there is a besieged Scottish manor house and a gang of baddies who are not only foreigners but - even worse - possibly Bolsheviks. Throw in a few cases of mistaken identity (accidental and deliberate), some makeshift disguises, the laying of false trails and a few fortunate escapes on bicycle or on foot and you have a lighthearted entertaining adventure. Buchan also finds an opportunity to introduce a scene involving an impromptu political speech like that first seen in The Thirty-Nine Steps. As in Huntingtower, Buchan has chosen to render some of the dialogue in broad Scots, but, thankfully, in Castle Gay, this is confined to just one or two characters.
The book includes two recurring features of Buchan’s adventure stories: a villain who has a great brain but no scruples to go with it; and a female character whose attractions, along with her beauty, include tomboyish tendencies, courage, the ability to move through the countryside undetected and skills as a horsewoman. Once again Dickson McCunn plays a part in proceedings that demonstrates his calm, sensible and business-like approach to problems and that appeals to his sense of history and romance: ‘At last – at long last - his dream had come true. He was not pondering romance, he was living it...’.
Along the way, the previously mentioned reclusive press baron undergoes a sort of conversion. Shorn of the luxuries of life and the protective carapace he has built around himself, not to mention a few days’ experience of ‘roughing it’ in the Scottish countryside, he becomes a man of action rather than just populist rhetoric. ‘There were unexpected depths in him. He was a greater man than he had dreamt, and the time had come to show it.’
August 5, 2016
I wanted something light and entertaining and suitable for a walking holiday. John Buchan seemed to fit the bill perfectly, so I read Castle Gay, the second Dickson McCunn novel and one I hadn't read before. I liked it a lot; the McCunn novels are gentler and less full of danger and intrigue than the Richard Hannay books, and the two of the three I've read so far both start with their heroes embarking on walking holidays, which seemed appropriate. This was a mainly peril-free caper with some delightful descriptions of walking in south-west Scotland (not too far from where I was myself, just across the Solway Firth), some entertaining commentary on the role of the Press in British society (maybe things haven't actually changed that much in 80 years) and a plot about a timid, isolated rich man being redeemed by contact with nature which was rather reminiscent of a Chalet School book. All in all, great fun from start to finish.
March 25, 2012
Of course, Buchan is usually superb as a descriptive writer, but this novel stands out in this regard over many of his more famous novels. The aptness and precision of his descriptions throughout this book were my favorite part of the reading. The plot is less fantastic than many of his adventure/spy stories, and the protagonist is ("Wee") Jaikie from Huntingtower, now a collegian on holiday who stumbles upon an intrigue.
For a Buchan enthusiast, this is another great read. For someone new to Buchan, his Richard Hannay series (beginning with The 39 Steps) is probably a better first choice.
For a Buchan enthusiast, this is another great read. For someone new to Buchan, his Richard Hannay series (beginning with The 39 Steps) is probably a better first choice.
February 21, 2021
Working my way along the bookeshelves of Michele's numerous volumes its time for more than The 49 Steps.
I enjoyed reading this story, there is something poetic in the way John Buchan writes - it may be the style of the 1930's rather than any effort on his part but I can hear the voice of Alison in the "golly gosh isn't this exciting!" style and its rather nice. Three stars though because I finished it and didn't really understand what the plot was and I became confused over some of the characters. I'm sure Michele would tsk at me and would probably tell me to go back and read Huntingtower first then try Castle Gay again. And so that is what I will do.
I enjoyed reading this story, there is something poetic in the way John Buchan writes - it may be the style of the 1930's rather than any effort on his part but I can hear the voice of Alison in the "golly gosh isn't this exciting!" style and its rather nice. Three stars though because I finished it and didn't really understand what the plot was and I became confused over some of the characters. I'm sure Michele would tsk at me and would probably tell me to go back and read Huntingtower first then try Castle Gay again. And so that is what I will do.
July 13, 2016
An amusing and readable adventure story from the 1930s. Warning - reflects the values of the time, as seen by a Tory lawyer / politician intent on telling history from the point of view of the sturdy values of the rising British middle classes. Some readers like me will find the depiction of central European politics somewhat distasteful. But you can't beat Buchan for a romp through the heather and hills of Scotland as gentlemanly sporting values and middle class common sense joins with working class patriotism and pluck to beat the dastardly foreign schemers.
August 14, 2016
This is a lighthearted adventure set in south west Scotland. A rugby playing undergraduate thwarts the agents of a foreign power and falls in love. I have been reading many of the author's books lately and I think this is my favourite so far.
June 16, 2015
Set in the 1930s, this is a classic "yarn" of mistaken identity, displaced monarchs, and dangerous Communists, all centering in Scotland at the castle home of a rich newspaper magnate.
July 21, 2019
A bit slower to start than Huntingtower, but just gets better and better. I thoroughly enjoyed losing myself in this 1930s adventure story and loved the way Dickson McCunn was woven into it. The writing is so good, the period and landscape evoked so wonderfully...
February 18, 2020
Never loses it's appeal
Written in a language of a bygone era it is nonetheless a compelling read and the reader is enriched by taking the trouble to comprehend words and phraseology long forgotten, to the detriment of the English language.
Written in a language of a bygone era it is nonetheless a compelling read and the reader is enriched by taking the trouble to comprehend words and phraseology long forgotten, to the detriment of the English language.
January 5, 2018
I just love the Dickson McCunn series. Jb must have had great fun writing these, I certainly do reading them
November 20, 2018
Simply wonderful thriller, once we get past the Jew-hatred...
May 17, 2020
Great book
Intelligent author
Writing for fun
But revealing much wisdom and observation
Intelligent author
Writing for fun
But revealing much wisdom and observation
April 7, 2021
The continuing adventures of Dickson McCunn and the Gorbal Die-hards.
This, the follow up to Huntingtower, is once again s piece of good clean enjoyable fun.
This, the follow up to Huntingtower, is once again s piece of good clean enjoyable fun.
May 6, 2013
Can be kindled very cheap as in public domain in some countries. In this 1930 book the Dickson McCunn series really takes off. Although the first of these (huntingtower) was quite good, I much prefer this one, which has protagonists with a bit more energy although it still keeps the suspense and foreign, possibly communist antagonists. We also find, for almost the first time ever the insertion of an admirable and likeable female character into one of Buchan’s books which is quite amazing to behold. When first introduced she seemed to my mind to be only about 13 years old, but now that I think of it, Buchan’s young male characters seem about the same anyway. It seems that university students matured late even in Buchan’s time!
Buchan and his sense of duty and propriety are still quite compelling in his books today. In this story, a journalist and his rugby friend cut short their holiday to rescue the journalist’s hated boss, as they have a duty to him. Even apart from the duty than that, when reading buchan i too feel like getting up at dawn and tramping the country in an old flannel suit is the only natural way for humans to behave, and anything else slowly saps energy. Judging by the number of people these days that feel bad for getting up late I wonder if we will ever be free of that particular myth.
Three quotes to show style:
{On Scotland – Buchan’s love for the borders}
"Scotland is the Lowlands. Here we have a civilisation of our own, just as good as England, but quite different. The Highlands are a sad, depopulated place, full of midges and kilted haberdashers. I know your Highland lodges--my husband had an unfortunate craze for stalking--gehennas of pitch-pine and deer's hair--not a bed fit to sleep in, and nothing for the unfortunate women to do but stump in hobnails between the showers along boggy roads!"
{Press rules}
We know that in these days with your universal suffrage the fount of authority is not in King or Cabinet, or even in your Parliament. It lies with the whole mass of your people, and who are their leaders? Not your statesmen, for you have lost your taste for oratory, and no longer attend meetings. It is your newspapers that rule you. What your man in the street reads in his newspaper he believes. What he believes he will make your Parliament believe, and what your Parliament orders your Cabinet must do. Is it not so?"
{Rise in feminism? – here a foreign prince is on a secret mission with two young adults}
The trouble was Prince John, who became suddenly a squire of dames. He wanted to help Alison over every difficulty. He would rise to his full height in crossing a brook that he might give her a hand, he did the same thing in parting the bramble coverts, and he thought it his duty to make polite conversation in spite of Jaikie's warning growl. The girl, as active as a squirrel, needed no assistance, and was much embarrassed by these attentions. Already Jaikie had forced the Prince's head down into the heather several times when he had raised it to address Alison, and he was just beginning to wonder how his companion was to be sternly reprimanded without majesty when Alison anticipated him. "Prince," she said in her clear high voice, "do you mind if I mention that for the present the Age of Chivalry has gone?"
...
[An adventure?] "How marvellous!" Alison cried, and the dusk did not conceal the glow in her eyes. "I'm going to be in it. Do you think I am going to that silly ball? Not I!"
Buchan and his sense of duty and propriety are still quite compelling in his books today. In this story, a journalist and his rugby friend cut short their holiday to rescue the journalist’s hated boss, as they have a duty to him. Even apart from the duty than that, when reading buchan i too feel like getting up at dawn and tramping the country in an old flannel suit is the only natural way for humans to behave, and anything else slowly saps energy. Judging by the number of people these days that feel bad for getting up late I wonder if we will ever be free of that particular myth.
Three quotes to show style:
{On Scotland – Buchan’s love for the borders}
"Scotland is the Lowlands. Here we have a civilisation of our own, just as good as England, but quite different. The Highlands are a sad, depopulated place, full of midges and kilted haberdashers. I know your Highland lodges--my husband had an unfortunate craze for stalking--gehennas of pitch-pine and deer's hair--not a bed fit to sleep in, and nothing for the unfortunate women to do but stump in hobnails between the showers along boggy roads!"
{Press rules}
We know that in these days with your universal suffrage the fount of authority is not in King or Cabinet, or even in your Parliament. It lies with the whole mass of your people, and who are their leaders? Not your statesmen, for you have lost your taste for oratory, and no longer attend meetings. It is your newspapers that rule you. What your man in the street reads in his newspaper he believes. What he believes he will make your Parliament believe, and what your Parliament orders your Cabinet must do. Is it not so?"
{Rise in feminism? – here a foreign prince is on a secret mission with two young adults}
The trouble was Prince John, who became suddenly a squire of dames. He wanted to help Alison over every difficulty. He would rise to his full height in crossing a brook that he might give her a hand, he did the same thing in parting the bramble coverts, and he thought it his duty to make polite conversation in spite of Jaikie's warning growl. The girl, as active as a squirrel, needed no assistance, and was much embarrassed by these attentions. Already Jaikie had forced the Prince's head down into the heather several times when he had raised it to address Alison, and he was just beginning to wonder how his companion was to be sternly reprimanded without majesty when Alison anticipated him. "Prince," she said in her clear high voice, "do you mind if I mention that for the present the Age of Chivalry has gone?"
...
[An adventure?] "How marvellous!" Alison cried, and the dusk did not conceal the glow in her eyes. "I'm going to be in it. Do you think I am going to that silly ball? Not I!"
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 16, 2011
A retired grocer and his two adopted sons -- a quite rugby champ and a tenacious reporter -- try to save a witless and reclusive newspaper magnate from a kidnapping plot. Goofy and brainless, but the writing is clever and the plot zips along. Jaikie, the rugby player, and Dickson, the grocer, are very fun characters.
August 6, 2010
This story of inter-war political intrigue, set in the Scottish Highlands was overall a bit of a disappointment. Plus one star for historical quaintness, minus stars for a rambling and generally unengaging story and wooden characterisation.
November 20, 2016
Would have been 5 star if tbere had been more of Dickson McCunn in it!
April 19, 2017
Another enjoyable story from John Buchan, this reunites us with some of the characters from Huntingtower, and is set 6 years later. Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews