"Huntingtower" is modern fairy-tale and a gripping adventure story by John Buchan, first published in 1922. It is the third of his three Dickson McCunn books.
If you only ever read one John Buchan book, it should be "Huntingtower", which is a perfect introduction to Buchan's body of work: it's not too far out-there in terms of being a conventional story, but it also positively seethes with philosophical themes, and the trademark Buchan wit and joie-de-vivre.
"Huntingtower" tells the story of Dickson McCunn, a solid, respectable Edinburgh grocer who does duty on a Sunday as an elder down at the Guthrie Memorial Kirk. Mr McCunn is a businessman and a Scot, but he is also a born romantic. He loves the novels of Sir Walter Scott particularly and has spent his whole life dreaming, in a gentle sort of way, of finding Romance and having some brilliant, thrilling role to play on the stage of the world.
When Dickson retires from the grocery business and the good Mrs McCunn goes on holiday, he finally gets his chance to walk off in search of adventure and, supplied with a copy of "The Compleat Angler", sets off across Scotland. His idyll is disturbed when he meets John Heritage, a Modern Poet, finding himself in the thick of a plot involving the kidnapping of a Russian princess, who is held prisoner in the rambling mansion, Huntingtower...
In "Huntingtower", Buchan introduces some of his best-loved characters and paints a remarkable picture of a man rejuvenated by joining much younger comrades in a fight against tyranny and fear.
