Richard Hannay Richard Hannay Major-General Sir Richard Hannay, KCB, OBE, DSO, Legion of Honour, is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist John Buchan and further made popular by the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film "The 39 Steps" (and other later film adaptations), very loosely based on Buchan's 1915 novel of the same name. In his autobiography, "Memory Hold-the-Door", Buchan suggests that the character is based, in part, on Edmund Ironside, from Edinburgh, a spy during the Second Boer War. Hannay appears in several novels as a major character, including: He also appears as a minor character in: "The Thirty-One Kings" (2017), by
Richard Hannay at Delagoa Bay in the Boer war. He goes to England in 1914, shortly before the events of "The Thirty-Nine Steps". The First World War breaks out eight weeks after the events of "The Thirty-Nine Steps", and Hannay immediately joins the New Army, and is promptly commissioned captain on the strength of his Matebele campaign experience. He is wounded in the leg and neck in the Battle of Loos in September 1915, by which time he had reached the rank of major. "Greenmantle," the sequel to "The Thirty-Nine Steps" begins in late 1915, with Hannay in Hampshire where he has