In his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, Buchan suggests that the character is based, in part, on Edmund Ironside, from Edinburgh, a spy during the Second Boer War, and a British Army field marshal and CIGS.
In Combined Forces (1985), a humorous novel by Jack Smithers, Hannay teams up after World War II with the similar heroes "Sapper"'s Bulldog Drummond and Dornford Yates' Jonah Mansel.
[4] The 1973 BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero had Christopher Cazenove playing Hannay in a scene from Mr. Standfast, as well as a number of other such heroic characters, including Beau Geste, Bulldog Drummond and James Bond.
In the 2000s, BBC Radio 4 adapted four of the Hannay books, each starring David Robb: The Thirty-Nine Steps (2001),[5] Greenmantle (2005),[6] Mr Standfast (2008)[7] and The Three Hostages (2009).
The First World War breaks out seven weeks after the events of The Thirty-Nine Steps, and Hannay immediately joins the New Army, and is promptly commissioned captain on the strength of his Matebele campaign experience.
The boy is named after Hannay's two great friends John Scantlebury Blenkiron (an American businessman and spy who had often helped him) and Peter Pienaar ("Mr Standfast"), an old Boer scout who seems to have been a kind of father-figure to him.
His last adventure, The Island of Sheep, occurs some 12 years later when Hannay, now in his fifties, is called by an old oath to protect the son of a man he once knew, who safeguards the secret of the greatest treasure on earth.