John Buchan

When I was a boy in secondary school we studied a novel of John Buchan's; I think it was "Prestor John". I very much doubt if that novel would be studied these days, or even read, or even mentioned with its politically incorrect views on "blacks" and Jews and other matters which most people now find distasteful. "The Thirty Nine Steps" also has some of this stuff in it (if memory is correct) but it's such a fast moving story that you can read it now without lingering on Buchan's old fashioned ideas on race, the Empire and so on.
I think I recall that his publisher did not at first want to publish it, thought it slight (which it is) and without much in the way of serious ideas but just a chase story. Well Buchan was on the board of his own publishers so, no doubt, that had something to do with its eventual acceptance.
It is, of course, a fine read though I don't regard it as in any way a classic - except in the sense that it may be a classic in the genre of "chase stories", if there is one.
I still see Hitchcok's film version in my mind's eye with Robert Donat as Richard Hannay; he was more charming a character than either Robert Powell or Kenneth More, the first too much the English gentleman, the second too much the caricature of the English gentleman. Donat was, of course, Scottish (which Buchan was) and that might be a clue to his playing the part so well.
Hitchcock changed the end much to its improvement.
I read once (may have been in the book of interviews of Hitch by Francois Truffaut) that Hitchcock chose novels which were not very good so that he could do what he wished with them, not have to be true to the literary quality of the book. Did he have this in mind when he made "The Thirty Nine Steps"?