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
James Ballantyne Hannay the University of Dundee by Sir Robert's son, Robert H. S. Robertson, who himself carried out much research into the life and career of James Hannay. These records are now held by the University's Archive Services. The University also holds the archives of his father Alexander Hannay. Heritage: The Case of the Hannay Diamonds. New Scientist, 21 February 1980, p. 591. James Ballantyne Hannay James Ballantyne Hannay FRSE(1855–1931) was a Scottish chemist who believed he had synthesized diamond in 1880. However, modern testing showed that the surviving samples from his experiments were natural diamond, not synthetic. While his techniques were