John Buchan led a truly extraordinary life: he was a diplomat,
soldier, barrister, journalist, historian, politician, publisher, poet
and novelist. He was born in Perth in 1875, the eldest son of a Free
Church of Scotland minister, and educated at Hutcheson’s Grammar School
in Glasgow. He graduated from Glasgow University then took a
scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. During his time there –
‘spent peacefully in an enclave like a monastery’ – he wrote two
historical novels.
In 1901 he became a barrister of the Middle
Temple and a private secretary to the High Commissioner for South
Africa. In 1907 he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor; they had three
sons and a daughter. After spells as a war correspondent, Lloyd
George’s Director of Information and a Conservative MP, Buchan – now
Sir John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield - moved to Canada in 1935
where he had been appointed Governor-General.
Despite poor
health throughout his life, Buchan’s literary output was remarkable –
thirty novels, over sixty non-fiction books, including biographies of
Sir Walter Scott and Oliver Cromwell, and seven collections of short
stories. In 1928 he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial
Prize, Britain’s oldest literary prize for his biography of the Marquis
of Montrose. Buchan’s distinctive thrillers – ‘shockers’ as he called
them – were characterised by suspenseful atmosphere, conspiracy
theories and romantic heroes, notably Richard Hannay (based on the
real-life military spy William Ironside) and Sir Edward Leithen. Buchan
was a favourite writer of Alfred Hitchcock, whose screen adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps was phenomenally successful.
John Buchan served as Governor-General of Canada until his death in 1940, the year his autobiography Memory Hold-the-door was published. His last novel Sick Heart River was published posthumously in 1941.
