John Buchan

The respectable establishment figure Buchan (to become famous for his adventure stories) and the adamantine marxist MacDiarmid may have seemed improbable long-term colleagues, but collaborated productively in various ways. Buchan befriended Belloc at Oxford, and based one of his heroes partly on Lawrence, a regular visitor. He knew James and Graves, and published Wells. It is said that he didn’t intend his stories to promote the upper-class attitudes they are generally perceived to, but to pastiche them.