John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH PC DL (26 August 1875 - 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the administrator of various colonies in southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort during World War I. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction. In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, appointed Buchan to replace the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada, for which purpose Buchan was raised to the peerage. He occupied the post until his death in 1940.
Buchan was enthusiastic about literacy and the development of Canadian culture, and he received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.
Buchan was born in Perth, Scotland, the first child of John Buchan-a Free Church of Scotland minister-and Helen Jane Buchan. He was brought up in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and spent many summer holidays with his maternal grandparents in Broughton in the Scottish Borders. There he developed a love for walking and for the local scenery and wildlife, both of which are often featured in his novels. The protagonist in several of his books is Sir Edward Leithen, whose name is borrowed from the Leithen Water, a tributary of the River Tweed.
Buchan attended Hutchesons' Grammar School and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Glasgow at age 17, where he studied classics as a student of James Caddell and wrote poetry, and became a published author. He moved on to study Literae Humaniores (the Classics) at Brasenose College, Oxford with a junior William Hulme scholarship in 1895,[1] where his friends included Hilaire Belloc, Raymond Asquith, and Aubrey Herbert. Buchan won the Stanhope essay prize in 1897 and the Newdigate Prize for poetry the following year;[1] he also was elected as the president of the Oxford Union and had six of his works published.[2]
Buchan had his first portrait painted in 1900 by a young Sholto Johnstone Douglas at around the time of his graduation from Oxford