In August, Broadstairs Folk Week brings music sessions to pubs, gardens and beaches, whilst Broadstairs Water Gala is a family-friendly fiesta of events finished with fireworks. Spring and autumn host Broadstairs Food Festival , an irresistible celebration of locally-produced, fine food and drink. One of those determined holidaymakers that August was a Scottish author, John Buchan, and Broadstairs would be influential in the development of his most famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Such scaremongering extended to the younger generation, with similar stories appearing in boys’ magazines and comics – one ran a rip-roaring yarn of the ‘evil Hun’ invading Kent, only to be thwarted by a gallant troop of Boy Scouts. There were also rumours of enemy spies, and it is alleged that a German agent was captured at North Foreland. Taking the sea air Another factor in the story’s development was the public’s fear that German spies operated throughout the country. On Friday 28 August – two days after Buchan’s birthday, which he celebrated at St Cuby – the Thanet Times ran a spy scare story in which a Margate woman found herself confronted by two men, one armed with a revolver. ‘The men told her to keep quiet, because they were after German spies,’ the paper reported. No one is certain how he came up with Bradgate. Some believe that it was taken from the Saxon words ‘brad’ (meaning ‘broad’) and ‘gaet’ (‘access to the sea’). Another theory is that he simply took the ‘Brad’ from Bradstowe, a little hamlet now part of the town, and ‘gate’ from nearby Kingsgate. One more suggestion is that Bradgate was an ancient name for Broadstairs, but there is no hard evidence for this. Cliff-top paths link beautiful bays, just inland St Peter's villagestages award-winning heritage tours, while the Crampton Tower Museum provides an intriguing insight into Victorian engineering.The action starts in London, although most of the story is set in Buchan’s native Scotland. However, in the last chapter, Various Parties Converging on the Sea, the finale takes place in the fictional town of Bradgate – inspired by Broadstairs. Also in Thanet at the same time were Susan’s cousin, Hilda Grenfell, and her family. They were renting a cliff-top villa half a mile away at North Foreland which had a set of steps cut into the chalk that led down to a private beach. The villa was called St Cuby and is believed to be the inspiration for Trafalgar Lodge, where the book’s hero, Richard Hannay, meets the villainous Mr Appleton. Today, more than a century of erosion has done away with most of the beach. The wooden steps were replaced in the 1940s with more than 100 concrete ones, which are now crumbling, and signs at both ends state that public access is prohibited. Inside, a rusting handrail leads up and the remnants of light fittings can be seen in the tunnel sections. Even so, if you stop and let your imagination take over, you can almost hear the frantic footsteps as one of Appleton’s spies tries to make his escape: ‘Schnell, Franz,’ cried a voice, ‘das Boot, das Boot!’ Spies around the corner

The gun turned out to be a toy and, when questioned by police, the men explained how they had witnessed suspicious activity at a local garage. They had stopped the woman, believing her to be involved. It is quite feasible that, even if Buchan didn’t read about himself, he could have heard about it through local gossip. We had some quite nice lodgings at the seaside and should have enjoyed ourselves, as Alice’s health improved all the time, but the war precluded all happiness and comfort…In fact, he had been toying with the notion of writing a detective story for some time. ‘I should like to write a story of this sort,’ he told his wife. ‘And take real pains with it. Most detective story-writers don’t take half enough trouble with their characters, and no-one cares what becomes of either corpse or murderer.’