1. John Buchan returned to England in 1903, continued as a barrister and journalist.
37 Facts About John Buchan
1. 2.
John Buchan left the Bar when he joined Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers in 1907.
3.
John Buchan was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927.
4.
In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister R B Bennett, appointed Buchan to succeed the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada and two months later raised him to the peerage as Baron Tweedsmuir.
5.
John Buchan occupied the post until his death in 1940.
6.
John Buchan promoted Canadian unity and helped strengthen the sovereignty of Canada constitutionally and culturally.
7.
John Buchan received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.
8.
John Buchan was brought up in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and spent many summer holidays with his maternal grandparents in Broughton in the Scottish Borders.
9.
John Buchan was awarded a scholarship to the University of Glasgow at age 17, where he studied classics as a student of Gilbert Murray, wrote poetry, and became a published author.
10.
John Buchan moved on to study Literae Humaniores at Brasenose College, Oxford, with a Junior Hulme scholarship in 1895 and in his third year achieved a Senior Hulme scholarship, adding to his financial security.
11.
John Buchan gained an acquaintance with a country that would feature prominently in his writing, which he resumed, along with his career as a barrister, upon his return to London in 1903.
12.
In 1910, Buchan wrote Prester John, set in South Africa, another of his adventure novels.
13.
John Buchan began to suffer from duodenal ulcers, a condition that later afflicted one of his fictional characters, about the same time that he ventured into politics and was adopted as Unionist candidate in March 1911 for the Scottish Borders seat of Peebles and Selkirk.
14.
John Buchan supported some Liberal causes, such as free trade, women's suffrage, national insurance, and curtailing the powers of the House of Lords.
15.
John Buchan worked in the Foreign Office, and for a time was a war correspondent in France for The Times in 1915.
16.
The novel featured John Buchan's oft-used hero, Richard Hannay, whose character was partly based on Edmund Ironside, a friend of John Buchan from his days in South Africa.
17.
In June 1916 John Buchan was sent out to the Western Front to be attached to the British Army's General Headquarters Intelligence Section, to assist with drafting official communiques for the press.
18.
In early 1918, John Buchan was made head of a Department of Intelligence within a new Ministry of Information under Lord Beaverbrook.
19.
At one point, Beaverbrook had requested that John Buchan meet with journalist and neo-Jacobite Herbert Vivian and admitted to Vivian that he had been a Jacobite sympathiser.
20.
John Buchan was in fact ambivalent about the Jacobite cause but he did write romances about that adventurous period, for example, A Lost Lady of Old Years, A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys and Midwinter.
21.
John Buchan moved to Elsfield, Oxfordshire in 1920 and had become president of the Scottish Historical Society and a trustee of the National Library of Scotland, and he maintained ties with various universities.
22.
John Buchan found himself profoundly affected by John Morley's Life of Gladstone, which Buchan read in the early months of the Second World War.
23.
In 1933 and 1934, John Buchan was further appointed as King George V's Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
24.
John Buchan was active and vocal in Parliament in condemning the treatment of Jews in Germany.
25.
John Buchan was described as being "overtly antisemitic" by author Anthony Starr.
26.
In recognition of his contributions to literature and education, on 1 January 1932, John Buchan was granted the personal gift of the sovereign of induction into the Order of the Companions of Honour.
27.
John Buchan remained in the role until his appointment as Governor General of Canada in 1935.
28.
John Buchan had written many appreciative words about the country as a journalist on The Spectator and had followed the actions of the Canadian forces in the First World War when writing Nelson's History of the War, and was helped by talks with Julian Byng, during a visit Canada in 1924.
29.
John Buchan had written a memoir of a previous Governor General, Lord Minto, published in 1924.
30.
John Buchan continued writing during his time in Canada, but he took his position as Governor General seriously, and from the outset made it his goal to travel the length and breadth of Canada, including to the Arctic regions, and promoting Canadian unity in the process.
31.
John Buchan strengthened the sovereignty of Canada, constitutionally and culturally.
32.
John Buchan's ashes were returned to the UK aboard the cruiser HMS Orion for final burial at Elsfield, the village where he lived in Oxfordshire.
33.
When John Buchan died in Canada in February 1940 as Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir, he was widely and deeply mourned throughout the English-speaking world and beyond, both as writer and statesman.
34.
John Buchan was awarded the 1928 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography of the Marquess of Montrose.
35.
The "last John Buchan" was the 1941 novel Sick Heart River, in which a dying protagonist confronts the questions of the meaning of life in the Canadian wilderness.
36.
John Buchan left a living legacy in that at least four of his Canadian successors admired or took inspiration from his approach to the role of Governor General: Vincent Massey ; General Georges Vanier ; Adrienne Clarkson ; and David Johnston.
37.
John Buchan wrote in the foreword to a booklet published to commemorate his visit: "I have now travelled over most of Canada and have seen many wonderful things, but I have seen nothing more beautiful and more wonderful than the great park which British Columbia has done me the honour to call by my name".