During the First World War, a rich crop of legends sprouted from the battlefields and grew with such ferocity that many still excite controversy today. This book is the first to examine the roots of those stories and reveal the truth. Some myths remain well-known. Did an entire battalion of the Norfolk Regiment vanish without trace at Gallipoli in 1915? Did thousands of Russian troops actually pass through England with snow on their boots? In 1914, an acute spy mania gripped the British public, who imagined that the country was brimming with German spies. Xenophobia, denunciations and attacks on dachshunds were rampant. Amazingly, there was even talk of enemy aircraft dropping poisoned sweets to kill British children. Myths such as the Angel of Mons and the Comrade in White were more innocent creations. With no radio or television, rumours of disaster were rife, and the apparition of mystical guardian spirits gave hope to the civilian population at home. Other stories, such as the so-called Crucified Canadian, and the existence of a gruesome German corpse rendering factory, were more sinister. Yet in an age of new and startling technologies such as poison gas, submarine warfare and the tank, such tales appeared believable. Using a wide range of contemporary sources, James Hayward traces the story of each myth and examines the likely explanation. Supported by a selection of rare photographs and illustrations, the result is a refreshingly different perspective on the common ‘mud and trenches’ view of the First World War, shedding fascinating new light on many curious and unexplained wartime tales.

Hannay is called in to investigate rumours of an uprising in the Muslim world, and undertakes a perilous journey through enemy territory to meet his friend Sandy in Constantinople. Once there, he and his friends must thwart the Germans' plans to use religion to help them win the war, climaxing at the battle of Erzurum.

Considered a quintessentially 'popular' author, John Buchan was a writer of fiction, journalism, philosophy and Scottish history. By examining his engagement with empire, psychoanalysis and propaganda, the contributors to this volume place Buchan at the centre of the debate between popular culture and the modernist elite.

The Second World War gave rise to a rich crop of legends, many of which persist in the public consciousness today. Some are well known, such as the escape of an undead Hitler to South America, Allied aircraft buzzed by 'Foo Fighters' and UFOs, German parachutists dressed as nuns, and a failed German invasion of Suffolk in 1940. Others are more subtle, such as the vaunted Dunkirk spirit, which portrayed the disaster of 1940 as a victory, and the conspiracy theories surrounding Rudolf Hess. Did he fly to Scotland to negotiate a peace treaty with members of the Royal Family? Was the aged prisoner who died in Spandau Prison a double? From tales of betrayal at Dieppe and Arnhem to Hitler's obsession with the occult and Nazi U-boat bases in Ireland, James Hayward offers a refreshing and intriguing perspective on the myths, legends and folk memories of the Second World War.

A sequel to 'Huntingtower' and 'Castle Gay', 'The House of the Four Winds' is set in Central Europe in the 1930's. Scottish grocer Dickson McCunn features in his most exciting role. Gorbals Die-hards, Jaikie and his pals, are now dabbling in politics. On his trek across Europe, Jaikie is warned to avoid Evallonia. It is in danger of being overthrown by the cruel Mastrovin. However Jaikie cannot resist taking a look and ends up being kidnapped twice. Moreover, he is not the only one needing to be rescued, and Evallonia's fate hangs in the balance until Dickson McCunn appears on the scene.

As war looms in Europe, Richard Hannay returns from Rhodesia to his home in London. His neighbor, an American freelance spy named Franklin Scudder, claims to know of an assassination plot to destabilize Europe. When Hannay finds Scudder dead in his flat he is drawn into a fast-paced labyrinthine adventure that takes him from the hills of Scotland to an unassuming location by the sea. The progenitor of the classic man-on-the-run thriller, The Thirty-Nine Steps first appeared as a serial adventure story in Blackwood's Magazine from August to September 1915 and in book form in October of that year. Since its publication it has never been out of print and has been frequently adapted for television, radio, theater, and film, including, quite famously, a 1935 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

This Encyclopedia offers an indispensable reference guide to twentieth-century fiction in the English-language. With nearly 500 contributors and over one million words, it is the most comprehensive and authoritative reference guide to twentieth-century fiction in the English language. Contains over 500 entries of 1000-3000 words written in lucid, jargon-free prose, by an international cast of leading scholars Arranged in three volumes covering British and Irish Fiction, American Fiction, and World Fiction, with each volume edited by a leading scholar in the field Entries cover major writers (such as Saul Bellow, Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, A.S. Byatt, Samual Beckett, D.H. Lawrence, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee, and Ngûgî Wa Thiong’o) and their key works Examines the genres and sub-genres of fiction in English across the twentieth century (including crime fiction, Sci-Fi, chick lit, the noir novel, and the avant-garde novel) as well as the major movements, debates, and rubrics within the field, such as censorship, globalization, modernist fiction, fiction and the film industry, and the fiction of migration, diaspora, and exile