The Runagates Club

The Runagates Club is a 1928 collection of short stories by the Scottish author John Buchan. The collection consists of twelve tales presented as reminiscences of members of The Runagates Club, a London dining society. Several of the stories are recounted by recurrent characters in Buchan’s fiction, including Richard Hannay, Sandy Arbuthnot, John Palliser-Yeates, Charles Lamancha, and Edward Leithen.

The Runagates Club
First edition cover
AuthorJohn Buchan
LanguageEnglish
GenreShort story collection
PublisherHodder & Stoughton[1]
Publication date
1928 [1]
Media typePrint
Pages331 [1]

Contents

The stories are entitled:

  • The Green Wildebeest: Sir Richard Hannay’s Story
  • The Frying Pan and the Fire: The Duke of Burminster’s Story
    • 1. The Frying-Pan
    • 2. The Fire
  • Dr Lartius: Mr Palliser-Yeates’s Story
  • The Wind in the Portico: Mr Henry Nightingale's Story
  • ’Divus’ Johnston: Lord Lamancha's Story
  • The Loathly Opposite: Major Oliver Pugh's Story
  • Sing a Song of Sixpence: Sir Edward Leithen's Story
  • Ship to Tarshish: Mr Ralph Collatt's Story
  • Skule Skerry: Mr Anthony Hurrell's Story
  • ’Tendebant Manus’: Sir Arthur Warcliffe's Story
  • The Last Crusade: Mr Francis Martendale's Story
  • Fullcircle: Mr Martin Peckwether's Story

Title

According to Buchan's preface, the book's title is taken from Psalm 68: "He letteth the runagates continue in scarceness", a reference to the "execrable" quality of the club's food and wine.

Critical reception

The stories are "pleasingly diverse in subject, incident and treatment" according to a contemporary reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement.[2]

Discussing The Runagates Club, Brian Stableford praised "The Green Wildebeest" as "a well-executed story". Stableford also described "Skule Skerry", "Tendebant Manus", and "Fullcircle" as "tales of subtle hauntings, told with a delicacy with Buchan rarely bothered to bring to his hurriedly-penned novels."[3]

Andrew Lownie, in John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier (2013) notes that this work, Buchan's only collection of post First World War short stories, is unique in including all of his major characters. He holds the stories to be beautifully self-contained, and to demonstrate "the usual Buchan themes of an unwitting amateur drawn into adventure and the fragile division between civilisation and chaos".[2]

References
  1. "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  2. Lownie, Andrew (2013). John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier. Thistle Publishing. pp. 201–202. ISBN 978-1-909609-99-0.
  3. Stableford, Brian, "Buchan, John, (1st Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield)", in David Pringle, St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers (London: St. James Press, 1998}, pp. 104 ISBN 978-1-55862-206-7
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