Richard Hannay

Major-General Sir Richard Hannay, KCB, OBE, Legion of Honour is the fictional secret agent created by Scottish novelist, John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. The character is supposedly based upon Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, from Edinburgh, who was a spy during the Second Boer War.

Hannay appears in several novels, including:

• The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
• Greenmantle (1916)
• Mr Standfast (1919)
• The Three Hostages (1924)
• The Courts of the Morning (1929) - Though not as a major character.
• The Island of Sheep (1936)

Hannay has been portrayed on screen in the three films versions of The Thirty Nine Steps by Robert Donat, Kenneth More and Robert Powell respectively, while Powell reprised the role for the ITV seriesHannay. The 1973 BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero had Christopher Cazenove playing Hannay in a scene from Mr Standfast, as well as a number of other such heroic characters, including Beau Geste, Bulldog Drummond and James Bond. Barry Foster played Hannay in a 1977 television adaptation of The Three Hostages.

Early life

Richard Hannay was born in Scotland. He became a mining engineer spending three years prospecting for copper in German Damaraland and made a small fortune in Bulawayo. He returned to England in 1914, and the events of The 39 Steps take over.

The Great War, 1914-1918

The First World War broke out three weeks after the event of The 39 Steps and Hannay immediately joined the Army as a Captain. He suffered wounds to the leg and neck in the Battle of Loos in September 1915 by which time he was a Major. Greenmantle the sequel to The 39 Steps began in early 1916, with him in Hampshire where he had come to convalesce after Loos. During the events of Greenmantle, his work as a spy in wartime Europe and Turkey earned him a DSO and CB. Following this, he returned to regular service in the army and was rapidly promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. In early 1917, however, he was called back to the secret service to hunt an exceptionally dangerous man during the decisive months of World War I. During this time, told in Mr Standfast, he met and fell in love with his future wife, Mary Lamington, a young VAD nurse with remarkable brains and beauty. Later, in 1918, being promoted to major-general, he returned to the front lines and participated in the desperate fighting following the Germans' massive, last-ditch effort to win the war.

Later Life

Soon after the war had ended, Hannay married Mary Lamington, and the following year had a son, Peter John Hannay. The boy was probably named after Hannay's two great friends John S. Blenkiron (an American spy who had often helped him) and Peter Pienaar (a.k.a. "Mr Standfast"), an old Boer scout who seems to have been a kind of father-figure to him. The family settled in Mary's old home in the Cotswolds, Fosse Manor, and Hannay (now a KCB) found peace and enjoyment as a kind of gentleman farmer. However, in 1920 or 1921, Hannay again found himself in an adventure, this time with his wife's help unravelling the mystery of three kidnappings in The Three Hostages.

His last adventure, The Island of Sheep, occurs some twelve years later on, when Hannay, now in his fifties, is called by an old oath to protect the son of a man he once knew, who safeguards the secret of the greatest treasure on earth. This book also focusses on Hannay's son, Peter John, now a bright but solemn teenager.

Even though the Hannay books stop short of World War 2, John Buchan's last novel, Sick Heart River (published just after its author died in 1940) offers a guess to Hannay's future: dying in Canada, Hannay's friend Sir Edward Leithen hears of the outbreak of war in Europe and guesses that many of his old friends, including Hannay, will have taken up arms again.

Impact on Espionage Fiction

Richard Hannay was one of the first modern spy thriller heroes, and as such has heavily influenced the genre. Today, considered in the light of mainstream espionage fiction, Hannay appears to be badly cliched--although one could point out that this is not his fault, as he was created well before his attributes became cliched.

In terms of personality, for example, Hannay seems to be a stereotypical 'strong, silent' Britisher, combining the stereotype of the dour- Scotsman with the stiff upper lip of an Englishman and also with a tough physique and shrewd brains (although not brilliant); daring and resourceful. In terms of plot, he is often forced to conduct his activities on the wrong side of the law, hunted by the police and enemy alike; he falls in love with a beautiful (blonde) spy on his own side; he is often called upon to thwart the Germans in some evil plan certain to ruin Britain's war effort.

However, Hannay also retains some characteristics that sharply distinguish him from both those who followed and those that sought to imitate him. He narrates all the books about him, and shows a much wider range of emotion than usually expected from this kind of thriller hero. Nowhere near as hard-boiled as the detective of American noir fiction, Hannay is dependent upon his friends, and appears to be a religious man--like his author, Presbyterian. He is also increasingly shown to be something of a philosopher; he does not dehumanise his enemy, and despite sharing some of the racial prejudices of his day, is open-minded towards Germans, pacifists, and similar demonised groups of the time.

Most remarkably in contrast to more recent thriller heroes, however, Hannay finds it extremely difficult to talk to women, suffering from months of nerves before declaring his love for Mary. Until she appears, he has no love interest (indeed, the first two books are very tautly constructed, and in no way suffer from an absence of romance), and when puzzling over his love for Mary, he remarks, "You can't live my kind of life for forty years, wholly among men, and be any good at pretty speeches to women." Being ignorant of women, however, does not make him mentally teenaged or immature: he is in fact a very shrewd and able judge of men, and often unusually wise for the hero of a romping thriller.

See also

• Edward Leithen
• Richard Hannay: The Thirty-Nine Steps' Secret Scot