Twelve stories comprise John Buchan's last collection of short stories, a classic of British interwar short fiction written from 1913 to 1927.

Buchan's most popular character Richard Hannay battles an ancient curse in South Africa in The Green Wildebeest' and Edward Leithen tags along in an assassins' war in Sing a Song of Sixpence'. The Runagates Club features First World War spy and code-cracking thrillers The Loathly Opposite' and Dr Lartius'; tales of supernatural possession in deepest Wales, comfortable Oxfordshire and the House of Commons, in The Wind in the Portico', Fullcircle' and Tendebant Manus'; and stories of survival in the far North and in Depression-era Canada with Skule Skerry' and Ship to Tarshish'. There is farce too, in The Frying-Pan and the Fire' and Divus Johnston', and the riotous journalistic romp of The Last Crusade' is the last word on fake news, for all eras.

What makes The Runagates Club special is that Buchan designed it as a showcase to bring together the best of his magazine fiction. He repurposed these stories with new beginnings, framing them as after-dinner stories told over the port in a late 1920s private gentleman's dining-club. This is interwar storytelling at its very best, with a critical introduction by Kate Macdonald, a leading authority on Buchan's writing.