Good things from Britain #1-- Adventure Novels

I often express my disappointment in modern great Britain, but only because I so admire her past. So today, in solidarity, some odd things I love about Britain. First, a great 20th Century adventure novelist, John Buchan. His combination of high- Tory romanticism, democratic common sense, and happily- expressed prejudice would never see publication today. Everyone should read his better- known books-- The Thirty- Nine Steps, Greenmantle, John MacNab, Prester John. But there are many delights in his more obscure titles too, and Amazon (US!) has 341 titles of his in print.

I was reading one of these, The Courts of the Morning, recently, and came across this passage, which hilariously reflects my own prejudices. Anyone who knows or reads me knows how much I love Asia, Russia, Africa; I would also instantly take a free trip to Oceania or Australia. Somehow though, South America ("South America/ Stole our name"-- Randy Newman) holds less interest. So I must say I cracked up when I came upon this passage, written in 1929, and spoken by perennial Buchan hero Sandy Arbuthnot-- it is almost worthy of early Evelyn Waugh: "I've never been there, and I never want to go. It's too big and badly put together, like a child's mud castle. There's every kind of noxious insect, and it's the happy home of poisons, and the people are as ugly as sin. The land isn't built according to our human scale,and I have no taste for nightmares."