Sir Walter Bullivant up. In the first chapter of the novel, the reader also learns of Bullivant's son Harry Bullivant, who lost his life while spying in the Middle East in the guise of a muleteer. Sir Walter Bullivant Sir Walter Bullivant is a fictional character created by the Scottish thriller writer John Buchan for his series of novels featuring the spy Richard Hannay. He plays small but significant roles in both "The Thirty-Nine Steps" and "Greenmantle". Sir Walter is a senior mandarin at the Foreign Office in the years leading up to World War I. He is the archetypal spymaster — gruff,
Hannay baronets 1786, and the impeachment of Impey, 9 May 1788, but left him during the Regency crisis together with his colleague at Camelford, James Macpherson, ‘both of whom were annoyed because Pitt had refused to allow Sir John Macpherson to return to India’. ‘Sir John Macpherson’, wrote James Grant to Lord Cornwallis, 18 Mar. 1789, ‘... took the opportunity of going over to the Rising Sun in the first boat ... he carried off his namesake and Sir Samuel Hannay.’ Hannay died 11 Dec. 1790. The Gentleman’s Magazine (1790, p. 1151), in Hannay’s obituary note, describes him as ‘formerly an eminent