2110-6-1-16

Knox Manse, Huntly, New Zealand.

13/7/32

Colonel Buchan M.P. House of Commons London

Dear Sir,

May I thank you for your "Sir Walter Scott". As a Scott worshipper I have revelled in it and it has kept me before my study fire until the small hours of the morning.

I had the good fortune to spend the year 1930-31 in the Old Country, at Cambridge and in the vacations I spent several weeks in the Border country, thus fulfilling a dream I had had since childhood. I love the way in which, not only in this book but in your novels also, you make that country live in the memory

2.

I nearly wrote a few years ago to thank you for your "Montrose" and should like to do so now. You rather damaged a hero for me then, for I was bred in a Manse where the Covenanters were worshipped and the opponents of the Covenant anathematised, but, though I am still proud of my Covenanting tradition, you have made me also admire the Great Marquis.

As for your novels, I have read most of them at least twice, and even at the second reading, they lure me from my theology and my sermon writing.

I hope you will not think me presumptuous in writing. Since boyhood I have owed so many hours of happiness to you that I felt I should like to thank you.

I am,

Yours sincerely

Malcolm Wilson.