Colonel John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875 - 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and politician. He is best known for his mystery and ghost stories.The Wind in the Portico is a strange tale of a visit by a classical scholar, Nightingale, to an odd castle set in a park in Shropshire where a rare manuscript is housed.

The owner of the castle is the amiable but eccentric Dubellay, an amateur historian who inherited his title and mansion ten years earlier and took the opportunity to excavate the site of an old Roman temple in the grounds. Since then he has spent a fortune building a huge and bizarre portico onto one side of his house as a home for the carvings and altar from the temple.

Nightingale is puzzled by the oppressive heat in the house, the strange hot wind which blows through the portico... and most of all by the very odd behaviour of Dubellay. It appears that Dubellay is in terrible danger and something highly sinister has taken up residence in the portico.