From a review of The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia, by Roger Kimball (St. Augustine’s Press, 360 pp., $35) at http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0803bt.html#cform

"John Buchan, the now-forgotten inventor of the spy novel." I find this a funny comment, as while he may be  forgotten , but his best know work may sound very familiar, The Thirty-Nine Steps, best know for being  filmed by Alfred Hitchcock.