Greenmantle
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Greenmantle is the second of the Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan, first published in 1916.
It is one of two Hannay novels set during the First World War, and opens in November 1915 when Hannay is convalescing from wounds received at the Battle of Loos. Following the murder of a British spy, Hannay is summoned to the Foreign Office to help with the investigation. The Allies fear that the Germans and their Turkish allies are plotting to cause a great uprising throughout the Muslim world, that will throw the whole of the Middle East, India and North Africa into turmoil. The only clues left by the dead spy are the words Kasredin, cancer and v.I.
Hannay and his friends Sandy Arbuthnot, the American John Blenkiron, and Peter Pienaar, embark on perilous journeys across Europe to track down the mysterious Greenmantle, who is the prophesied leader of the uprising. The book climaxes with the capture of the Turkish fortress of Erzurum by the Russian army in February 1916.
Many feel that the character of Sandy Arbuthnot was based on Buchan's friend, Aubrey Herbert while Hannay drew on the real life military officer, Field Marshal Lord Edmund Ironside.
The book was very popular when published, and was read and enjoyed by Robert Baden-Powell and by the Russian Royal Family as they awaited the outcome of the Revolution in 1917. Many of its references to politial tensions in the Middle East seem strangely contemporary at the beginning of the 21st century.
The later Richard Hannay novels are Mr Standfast (1919), The Three Hostages (1924), and The Island of Sheep (1936).