ABSTRACT
Two years a er T. S. Eliot had opened Th e Waste Land (1922) with the mordant judgement that ‘April is the cruellest month’,1 John Buchan’s novel of struggle against anarchist conspiracy, Th e Th ree Hostages, began with a more upbeat re ection on the seasons:
It was still mid-March, one of those spring days when the noon is like May … e season was absurdly early, for the blackthorn was in ower and the hedge roots were full of primroses … [I]n the bracken in Stern Wood I thought I saw a woodcock, and hoped that the birds might nest with us this year, as they used to long ago. It was jolly to see the world coming to life again, and to remember that this patch of England was my own, and all these wild things, so to speak, members of my little household.2
