(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Name one character from any fandom I know and I will give you three facts about them from my personal canon.

Fandoms: Harry Potter, Doctor Who (though I reserve the right to do someone else here; I don't know canon well enough for Doctors 5-8 to be confident of being able to do their companions): I'd also be keen to have a crack at: Star Treks TOS and DS9, Dalziel and Pascoe (book canon only, obviously), Life on Mars, Patrick O'Brian, Swallows and Amazons, Narnia, and John Buchan's Richard Hannay-verse.

ETA: and the Wimsey-verse, of course!

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Susan Walker (and if I wanted to have a go at John Hannay, which book should I start with?)

[tree_and_leaf]

1. She's much better at knots than either John or Nancy.

2. She's naturally good at languages, and got a job at the Foreign Office at a secretarial grade. She was very good at her job, and would have had a very sucessful career if she hadn't given it up for marriage and a family.

3. Of all the Walker children, she is the one who looks the most like their mother (I have no idea why I think this, incidentally)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

3. Because John obviously looks like the captain, Titty is still at the scrawny stage, Roger is covered with mud and made largely of knees and elbows, and Bridget remains indeterminate.

[tree_and_leaf]

Good point.

Given that infant!Bridget is said to look like Quuen Victoria, I wonder whether, had she been born twenty years later, she'd have been stuck with the nickname Winnie, since it is a truth universally acknowledged that Modern British Babies all look like Churchill.

Although one of the battier older ladies at church did exclaim, on seeing the vicar's new baby "Aw, bless him, he looks just like the Archbishop of Canterbury" which, given that the poor kid has no eyebrows to speak of, let alone a beard you could lose half of Synod in, was stretching it a bit...

Oh, and Buchan

[tree_and_leaf]

If you specifically mean the Hannay-centric ones, I'd start at the beginning with the Thirty-Nine Steps. Actually Greenmantle (the second) is a better book, and Mr Standfast better yet, but it's worth reading them in order, I think.

If you just want to try Buchan, I'd recommend 'The Dancing Floor' (which is one of the ones with a more supernatural element) or 'The Courts of the Morning' (involving a revolution in South America), or, from the historicals, "The Free Fishers", or "Witchwood" (probably his best book). He was also a very good short story writer - there are some good anthologies. "John MacNab" is tremendous fun, too... sorry, this isn't very helpful, is it?

I have had this plot bunny for ages about a Hannay-Wimsey crossover, set in WWI (and involving the incident where Peter walks into a German staff room in disguise), but I'm having great difficulty getting the dates to work.

Thank you

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

For an entirely non-fanfic related reason, I need to read early C20 adventure novels about spies and conspiracies, preferably set in picturesque parts of the UK. I shall begin at the beginning.

Dates can always be squeezed a bit if necesssary - it's not as if the original authors don't sometimes do it themselves.