Author
John Buchan
1875-1940
A Scottish novelist, historian and politician who became Governor General of Canada, and whose spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps remains his best-known book.
John Buchan was born in Perth, Scotland, on 26 August 1875, the first child of a Free Church of Scotland minister. He grew up in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and on summer holidays with his grandparents in the Scottish Borders he came to love walking and the local scenery and wildlife, which often feature in his novels. He studied classics at the University of Glasgow and then at Brasenose College, Oxford.
He published his first novel in 1895, and at Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He became a barrister, served as private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa, and later worked in publishing and journalism. In the First World War he wrote a history of the war, worked in intelligence, and in 1917 became Director of Information. He was elected to Parliament in 1927.
The Thirty-Nine Steps, a spy thriller set just before the First World War, was published in 1915 and featured his recurring hero, Richard Hannay. Its sequel, Greenmantle, followed in 1916. Buchan wrote more than a hundred books in all, including nearly 30 novels and biographies of Walter Scott and Oliver Cromwell.
In 1935 he was made Baron Tweedsmuir and became Governor General of Canada, where he encouraged a distinct Canadian identity and founded the Governor General's Literary Awards. He died in Canada on 11 February 1940. Graham Greene later wrote that The Thirty-Nine Steps set a pattern for adventure writers.
Sources: wikipedia.org
