Mr. Standfast

Moxon Ivery

In the pacifist colony at Biggleswick, Ivery passes as a mild, well-read gentleman, welcome at every tea table and above suspicion. Yet the war's whole secret machinery seems to bend around him: he is the spider at the centre of a web that reaches from Scottish cliffs to American journalists. Hannay's pursuit of him becomes the spine of the book, and the closer he gets, the more the affable scholar's mask slips toward something imperial and merciless.

John S. Blenkiron

Blenkiron moves through the book as Hannay's steadiest ally, a man who never hurries and never misses, running agents and old friendships from Emporia to London. He affects the harmless invalid, dosing himself and shuffling cards, while quietly countering moves that would break lesser men. His calm in the face of Ivery's triumph is the measure of him: even when the trap seems closed, he is still playing his own game.

Peter Pienaar

Peter is Hannay's oldest comrade from South African days, a gentle, ungrammatical man who has faced death so often it has become ordinary. Wounded and taken prisoner, he fills his letters with reflections on bravery drawn from the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress, measuring himself against Mr. Standfast and finding himself wanting. His quiet resolve and his stubborn refusal to be pitied give the novel its moral centre, and his fate hangs over the whole adventure.

Mary Lamington

Mary works inside the same shadow network as Hannay, moving between Biggleswick and the front with a composure that belies her years. She is the one who names the cost of their trade, warning that the best of them will be taken, and her presence steadies the whole confederacy. Her blend of tenderness and resolve, fussing over Peter on the train while never flinching from the work, makes her both the book's emotional anchor and one of its sharpest operatives.

Richard Hannay

Hannay narrates the book from the mud of a thinly held sector, where a single German reconnaissance plane could doom his division, and from the stranger byways of a country riddled with enemy agents. He is a soldier who would rather be hunting than commanding, and his instinct for the lone trail repeatedly pulls him away from the safety of headquarters. His loyalty to Peter, Mary, and Blenkiron, and his growing hatred of Ivery, drive him through disguises, cliffs, and cold seas toward a confrontation he knows only one of them will survive.

Launcelot Wake

Wake arrives in the story as a type Hannay distrusts: a clever, argumentative objector to the war, more at home on a rock face than in a mess. When he and Hannay find themselves hunting the same enemy in the Scottish hills, his politics do not soften, but his honesty and physical courage earn him a place in the confederacy. His refusal to abandon his beliefs while still doing the dangerous work makes him one of the book's most interesting moral cases.