ABSTRACT
It was as a twelve year old that I was first introduced to John Buchan. The librarian of the town library, who had watched me rifling through her shelves of juvenile literature and then begin the happy process of rereading all of my favorites three times over and more, led me on a rainy summer afternoon into the adult section of the library where she showed me a whole shelf of volumes bound in red and green and black and brown, each bearing witness to the authorship of John Buchan. Here was a wealth of new found riches! Greenmantle was the volume I took home that afternoon. Greenmantle it was that swept me into the world of spies and heroes and taught me something of duplicity and how this is combatted. Greenmantle it was that opened for me a world of pleasure and even today it holds joy for me, despite an awareness of its romantic limitations.
