Sir Walter Bullivant 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, acutely conscious of his duty, yet thoughtful and kindly towards those he sends into peril. In "Greenmantle", he recruits Hannay to perform a dangerous mission in the East as the Great Game heats
Patrick Hannay the office of the Irish privy council in Dublin. Attempts, which were for a time successful, were made to oust him from this post, but Charles I reinstated him in 1625 on the grounds of his foreign service and relationship with Queen Anne. In 1627, Hannay became master of chancery in Ireland. He is said to have died at sea in 1629, but records continue until 1630. Hannay is mentioned in John Dunbar's "Epigrammaton Centuriæ Sex", 1616. In 1618–19 appeared "A Happy Husband"; as with Richard Brathwaite's "Good Wife" accompanying it, the work was written in imitation of Thomas Overbury's