Letter: Positive steps

A huge thank you to Stuart Kelly (1 February) for his praiseworthy attempt to bring John Buchan to our attention and redress the lack of notice being paid to him and to the 70th anniversary of his death.

My father introduced me to John Buchan's work when I was ten or 11 and I have been a devoted admirer ever since.

Like Stuart Kelly, I deplore the facile dismissal of aspects of his work by describing him as racist or bigoted.

Like every writer he was of his time and it is ludicrous that we judge him by what we choose to agree are the standards of the 21st century.

His ability as a storyteller is surely beyond reasonable doubt and those who dismiss him as no more than that cannot have read novels such as Sick Heart River.

I should also like to draw attention to the work of his sister, Anna Buchan, who wrote under the pseudonym of O Douglas and whose work has been largely neglected or dismissed as "nice Scottish stories".

She writes with a penetrating insight, a great deal of humour and paints a fascinating picture of life in towns such as Peebles and in the Borders in the early 20th century.

Surely it is time for a reappraisal of her work as well? Publishers such as Girls Gone By have moved towards republishing some of her novels but all my copies were bought in second-hand bookshops and I very much enjoyed seeking them out. Does anyone else out there still read them?

Anne Mitchell

Covesea Rise

Elgin

The pleasure that Dr Mary Brown (Letters, 2 February) gets from Buchan's Huntingtower is a shared one.

Last year I translated it into Scots and published it under the Fons Scotiae imprint with the title Dalquharter, a long but enjoyable process. In this we had the encouragement of Lady Stewartby, John Buchan's granddaughter and chairman of the John Buchan Society.

Iain WD Forde

Causewayend Main Street

Scotlandwell, Kinross-shire