The Curiously Specific Book Club

John Buchan’s THE 39 STEPS Part 2: hit the beach at North Foreland, Kent, in search of dastardly German spies

In Part Two of our Buchan-based adventure we switch from Scotland to the Kent coast. We’re in search of the eponymous 39 steps. But first we need to locate Trafalgar House where German secret agents are hiding out. We end up at North Foreland, between the homes of a German-hating lord and a German-loving marquess. And, yes, we did find some steps! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Buchan’s THE 39 STEPS Part 1: experience the thrill of a chase through Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland

It’s an iconic moment in British literature – John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay running across a moor with police, secret agents and an airplane all trying to hunt him down. But is it based on any kind of reality? We head for the Scottish Lowlands to find out, taking in abandoned train lines, the site of a car crash and a very remote farmhouse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margot Bennett’s THE WIDOW OF BATH Part Two: a North Foreland discovery

We return to Ramsgate in Kent with Margot Bennett’s brilliant thriller THE WIDOW OF BATH as our only guide. The book was published in 1952, the same year as rock and roll had its birthday. We’re looking for a hat shop and a suspicous employment agency and we’re pretty confident we’ve found both.We date the book’s action to 1951 with some of our usual close reading, before visiting our final location. The house of the deceased, Judge Bath, is described by Bennett as being five miles from the location of the book, on a clifftop looking over a bay. If you go five miles north from Ramsgate, you find yourself at North Foreland. And here there is something else extraordinary: another house, in which a writer completed his own chase thriller 40 years before Bennett’s. And in front of that house is a set of steps that go down to the sea.But that’s another story. For now, we leave you with one plea: read Margot Bennett. She deserves to be far better known than she is. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margot Bennett’s THE WIDOW OF BATH Part One: Shady goings-on in Ramsgate

A young man with a questionable background is sitting in a small hotel by an unnamed harbour in England. He is ostensibly writing a review. Behind him he hears a party of unseen people come into the hotel restaurant. He knows their voices. They are people from his past. One of them, he had a love affair with. She is now married to a judge. The judge’s name is Bath.So begins Margot Bennett’s perfectly calibrated 1952 thriller THE WIDOW OF BATH. But where is this strange hotel? All Bennett tells us directly is that this is ‘not Bournemouth.’ Thankfully, there are other clues – more than enough for us to get our teeth into.And so we take you to Ramsgate on the Kent coast, our candidate for the book’s location. We discover a past filled with suspicious waiters, terrible food, and eternal controversies about immigration. When it comes to immigration, we find nothing much has changed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Geoffrey Household’s ROGUE MALE Part 2: pursuit across Dorset – tracking down a secret holloway-hideaway

In Part Two we get out of town and attempt to bury ourselves in the Dorset countryside. We start at Dorchester, track down the narrator’s fake hideaway in the Sydling valley and then search for the famous ‘holloway’ where our hero tries to evade his pursuers. Is it a real place? Listen now to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.