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John Buchan 1875 - 1940 Contents: Biography.............................................................................................................
Author: Abner Day
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John Buchan 1875 - 1940

Contents: Biography.......................................................................................................................................................Pages 1 - 2 Contexts........................................................................................................................................................Pages 3 - 4 Further Reading / Contacts ................................................................................................................Pages 5 - 8

Biography: John Buchan (1875-1940) bears the distinction of having led one of the fullest and most accomplished lives of any Scottish writer. From his childhood as son of a Free Church minister to his appointment as Governor-General of Canada, his career encompassed publishing, journalism, the legal profession, the Houses of Parliament, the intelligence service, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and more than 100 published books, including over 30 novels. He was born in Perth, but moved around Scotland according to the requirements of his father’s profession, from the industrial townscapes of Glasgow to the idyllic rural landscapes of Broughton Green. Buchan showed early promise of his considerable intellectual gifts and was awarded a scholarship to read Classics at Oxford where his writing career began. He had published six novels by the time he left. Leaving Oxford, he became a barrister and later took a position as a government administrator with the High Commissioner for South Africa. His experiences there would inform his later novel Prester John (1910). When he came back to London, he continued to write his novels and work as a journalist. In 1906 he took a position with publishers Oliver Nelson where he was responsible for their Sixpenny Classics range of titles and the Nelson Sevenpenny Range of copyright novels. He even contributed a few books of his own, including the 24 volume Nelson’s History of the War War, the royalties from which he donated to war charities. He would later become director of the company.

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It was during this period that Buchan became closely involved with the Scottish literary scene. He was a regular contributor to Blackwood’s in Edinburgh – the magazine later serialised The Thirty-Nine Steps – and he became editor of the recently launched magazine, The Scottish Review. He used his influence to try to bring about a revival in Scottish writing, which had been in the doldrums since the death of Walter Scott Hugh MacDiarmid was also attempting a Scottish literary revival, but from a different angle, and the two writers, who were from completely different ends of the literary spectrum (one a writer of thrillers, the other a diamond-minded poet), worked together for some time. Buchan would eventually write the preface for MacDiarmid’s first book of poems Sangschaw. Sangschaw Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.

John Buchan 1875 - 1940

In 1912 Buchan became ill and during his recuperation in hospital wrote The ThirtyNine Steps (1915) which became a huge international best-seller, and later a celebrated Hitchcock movie. It was the first of his novels to feature the heroic Richard Hannay, a character who would appear in four more of Buchan’s novels, including Greenmantle (1916). When the First World War started Buchan was war correspondent for The Times. Between 1916-17 he served on the Headquarters Staff of the British Army in France as temporary Lieutenant Colonel. His career did not stop there. From 1917-18 Buchan was Director of Information for the Ministry of Information, and then for a short while after he was Director of Intelligence. In 1919 he was made a Director of Reuters, the international news agency. In 1927 Buchan stood for Parliament and was elected MP for the Scottish Universities. While in government he held a number of influential posts including his appointment, from 1933-34, as His Majesty’s High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. In 1935 he was made the first Baron Tweedsmuir and appointed Governor-General of Canada. He moved there, and died five years later. Buchan was an astoundingly prolific writer. He wrote poetry, historical romances, criticism, journalism, and a textbook for accountants: The Law according to the Taxation of Foreign Income. He wrote bestselling adventure novels like the Richard Hannay series. Another series of adventure novels, which included The Powerhouse (1913), The Gap in the Curtain (1932) and the posthumous Sick Heart River (1941) featured Sir Edward Leithan, a gentleman lawyer and a decent chap who finds himself in difficult situations. Yet another series of adventure novels had a retired Glasgow grocer as its daring protagonist. In spite of his broad, polymathic brilliance, his enduring fame and world-wide appeal, Buchan has been increasingly neglected in Scottish literature (find out why), though there are signs that this trend is beginning to be reversed. Buchan also wrote biographies of such diverse historical figures as Oliver Cromwell (1934) and Sir Walter Scott (1932). Scott served as a kind of role model to Buchan, who saw himself as someone who could have twin careers as a bestselling author and establishment figure. He died in 1940.

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John Buchan 1875 - 1940

Contexts ‘Who would be James Joyce if they could be John Buchan?” In 2001 best-selling crime writer Ian Rankin dedicated his book to Alan Massie, the Scottish journalist and historical novelist responsible for the quotation above. But what did Massie mean? The answer leads us to another question – when does writing become literature? John Buchan occupies a curious place in Scottish literature. His name is well known, his books continue to be read throughout the world, yet you won’t hear his name mentioned among the ‘great and the good’ of modern Scottish writing – the ‘literary canon’, as it is often referred to. People do not readily associate Buchan’s work with Hugh MacDiarmid or Neil Gunn – yet he played a significant role in bringing Scottish literature out from under the shadow of Scott and Stevenson. You won’t hear mention of any of his works in a discussion of the great Scottish novels of the 20th century, among the likes of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil Gunn, or Alasdair Gray – yet his suspense novels influenced generations of thriller writers. You might hear him as a footnote to a discussion of suspense and crime fiction – which would include Ian Rankin, Ian Fleming, John Le Carré among others – but that seems to serve to marginalise him even further, and exclude discussion of Buchan as a ‘serious’ writer. The popular impression of Buchan is that he wrote crime stories, one of which got made into a famous Hitchcock film. We can speculate the reasons for this. His life, lived mostly outside Scotland, does not fit well with our perception of how a Scottish man of letters should behave. Buchan was quick to join the British Establishment: beginning with a scholarship to Oxford (“nursery for the youth of the land” as he describes it in an article in the Glasgow Herald) then to an appointment on the staff of Lord Milner, High Commissioner to South Africa, his work writing propaganda material for the Ministry of Information, his election as a Conservative MP; and finally his assignment as Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada. It is difficult to define him as a specifically Scottish writer, but this probably has more to do with nationalistic chauvinism than anything else.

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Is it because he spent so much time in England? Robert Louis Stevenson spent much of his adult life away from his home country yet he occupies a central place in the Scottish literary tradition – perhaps it is because the themes of Stevenson’s work are quintessentially Scottish, firmly rooted in a Gothic sensibility. Stevenson is seen as an integral part of the Scottish literary tradition; Buchan isn’t. Perhaps Buchan spread his talent too wide, published too much. A “Jack of all trades; master of none”: the damning phrase for anyone seen to be over-achieving in more than one discipline. Was he a victim of his own success? Perhaps if he had concentrated on the biographies we would remember him as a first class biographer. If he’d only written Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.

John Buchan 1875 - 1940

historical books, he might have been remembered as one of Scotland’s great historians. If he’d kept his career horizons strictly within the publishing industry then we might remember him as the magazine editor who collaborated with Hugh MacDiarmid and helped get his career off the ground. Perhaps Buchan’s problem is he was too successful, did too much. Above everything he achieved in his remarkable life, Buchan is most famous for The Thirty-Nine Steps, Steps a slim book written during a period of convalescence in hospital, which had enormous influence in the development of the thriller/ suspense genre. Reading it now we may squirm at some of the corny sounding dialogue or descriptions, and a lot of the historical background may be meaningless to us. The suspense novel is a form of writing which dates very quickly, as it often relies on contemporary events. More disquietingly, we feel very uncomfortable at the anti-Semitism which pervades the novel as well as a certain top-down world view – these may have been representative of certain attitudes prevalent and acceptable in Buchan’s day, but they strike a jarring note with modern readers. His representation of local characters’ speech in dialect contrasts with the easy ‘official’ English of his hero and has the effect of patronising them, and rendering them ‘colourful’ local oddities rather than ‘real’ characters. Many writers since Buchan have made it their life’s work to rid literature of these linguistic anomalies which serve to marginalise local dialects and language. Despite this, however, we are struck by how easily these misgivings are swept away once we become sucked into the plot. The Thirty-Nine Steps is an excellently paced and plotted novel that, like the best in the genre, keeps you hooked until the end. Perhaps Buchan’s enduring fame as a thriller writer is where Buchan loses his claim to be among the great and the good of Scottish literature. And here we find ourselves in the controversial territory between popular fiction and literature: when is writing literature and when is it just writing? What makes a work like Sunset Song endure? What makes the novels of Neil Gunn shine like jewels from the past, when the work of Alasdair MacLean – a thriller writer from Glasgow and one of the most popular novelists in the world until the mid-1970s – is all but forgotten? James Kelman and Alasdair Gray continue to be celebrated, studied and read widely, while their contemporary William McIlvanney, another massive seller, fades from memory.

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Perhaps this is what Alan Massie meant. James Joyce may be revered and worshipped the world over for his crazy, towering masterpieces of dazzling linguistic ingenuity – but does he genuinely have claim to a popular readership? It takes weeks of hard work and the use of a good lending library to get anywhere with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – but you’d read The Thirty-Nine Steps in one enjoyable afternoon. Joyce is the genius, but Buchan has more readers. Maybe that’s the ultimate difference between ‘literature’ and just writing. Written By Colin Clark Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.

John Buchan 1875 - 1940

Further Reading Websites Introduction Overview of Buchan’s life & work http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/buchan.htm John Buchan Society This is really a web-site for researchers & academics but has lots of useful information. http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk Napier University Good background material & links to Blackwood’s magazine pages. http://www.pmpc.napier.ac.uk/scob/buchan.htm Glasgow University Interesting (though fairly academic) discussion article about Buchan’s work & life. http://www.gla.ac.uk:443/avenue/19/16johnbu.htm The following websites will be of general interest to the student of Scottish literature: Scottish Literary Tour Trust Featuring an extensive section on the Makars’ Literary Tour http://www.scot-lit-tour.co.uk National Library of Scotland http://www.nls.uk/ Scottish Poetry Library A very attractively laid out website with information on some of the major poets of the 20th century along with detailed readings of their best-known works. http://www.spl.org.uk/index.html

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SLAINTE The name stands for Scottish Librarians Across the Internet. This excellent site features brief, well-written biographies of many of the great Scottish writers. http://www.slainte.org.uk/Scotauth/scauhome.htm Scots Online From essays to an online dictionary this is a web-based resource with everything you could possibly need to know about the Scots language and how it is used. http://www.scots-online.org/ Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.

John Buchan 1875 - 1940

Shudder at the Niffer An essay in Scots about Scots. http://www.fleimin.demon.co.uk/Bletherskite/Shudder_At_The_Niffer.htm Gaelic & Scottish Connections A resource on Gaelic language and culture, featuring poetry and essays and an online dictionary. http://www.gaelicscottish.com/ Electric Scotland Electric Scotland is a real mixed bag of Scottish paraphernalia with nationalist overtones. This page in particular allows you to hear and read complete Scots poems, from MacDiarmid to Dunbar. http://www.electricscotland.com/si/features/scots/complete.htm Literature links An encyclopaedic web of links to Scots magazines, monuments, libraries and languages. http://www.burryman.com/scotland.html - lit Project Gutenberg This is a web-based publisher of copyright expired books. http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/cgi-bin/sdb/t9.cgi/ Poetry Archive A good, user-friendly site, sponsored by a bookseller, which features examples from some of the best poets in the world. http://www.poetry-archive.com/ Poem Index Almost 900 poems in the English language from 13th to 19th centuries. http://tcsu.trin.cam.ac.uk/~john/pgbev/html-interface/full-index.html Representative Poetry On-line An enormous and easy to use resource based at the University of Toronto featuring alphabetical and chronological lists of 450 poets with substantial selections of their work. http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet42.html

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Scottish PEN The name stands for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists and exists to promote the friendly co-operation between writers in the interests of freedom of expression throughout the world. http://www.scottishpen.org/

Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.

John Buchan 1875 - 1940

Writers’ Portraits Photographic and biographical pen portraits of some of Scotland’s greatest contemporary writers. http://www.nls.uk/writestuff/

Anthologies The Book of Prefaces edited and glossed by Alasdair Gray Bloomsbury (2000) Every home should have one. Dust jacket contains this advice: “Warning to Parents, Teachers, Librarians, Booksellers. Do not let smart children handle this book. It will help them pass examinations without reading anything else.” The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry Edited by Douglas Dunn Faber & Faber (1992) A detailed account of the dramatic transformations the Scottish verse underwent in the previous century, with an enlightening introduction by Dunn. The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse edited by Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah Penguin (2000) A beautifully presented chronology of some of the greatest Scottish poetry, from the 6th century to the present. The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse edited by Tom Scott Penguin (1970) Earlier incarnation of above, edited by Scott – a recent inductee to Makars’ Court. Contains the infamous and controversial rude verse attributed to Burns. Makes for an interesting comparison with Crawford & Imlah’s anthology. An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets Edited by Catherine Kerrigan Edinburgh University Press (1991) Covers folksong, ballad, Scots and Anglo-Scots, from the middle ages to contemporary poets.

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Studies and Criticism Scottish Literature eds Douglas Gifford, et al Edinburgh University Press (2002) Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.

John Buchan 1875 - 1940

This is all just about all you need to know about Scottish literature. A comprehensive, and very readable book. Excellent. The Mainstream Companion to Scottish Literature Trevor Royle Mainstream (1993) Alphabetically arranged standard reference on Scottish literature. Modern Scottish Literature Alan Bold Longman (1983) Learned, erudite discussion of the major writers and texts of Scottish literature in the 20th century. Brilliant study material for Higher English. Imagine a City: Glasgow In Fiction Moira Burgess Argyll (1998) The definitive work on Glasgow’s place in Scottish literature, written by the author of the Makars Court Tour script. A History of Scottish Women’s Writing edited by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan Edinburgh University Press (1997) This is the best book around for Scottish women’s writing at the moment. Tone can be a bit academic in places.

Contacts For further information about this project contact: Morris Paton Scottish Literary Tour Trust. Suite 2 97b West Bow Edinburgh EH1 2JP

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E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.scot-lit-tour.co.uk

Copyright 2003 © Scottish Literary Tour Trust. All Rights Reserved.