Yet astonishingly, Buchan was not primarily a man of letters. He was also a barrister, publisher, war correspondent, wartime director of information, director of Reuters, member of Parliament, diplomat, high commissioner for the Church of Scotland, and from 1935 until his death, governor-general of Canada as the first Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield.
Buchan was born at Perth, Scotland, the eldest child of John Buchan, minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and his wife, Helen Masterson Buchan. Buchan's childhood was spent along the Fife coast and at Kirkcaldy, and his boyhood in Glasgow. Summers were spent with his Masterson grandparents in the Tweed valley, where the rugged natural scenery was to become a powerful influence on his writing. Other early influences were the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. He attended Hutcheson's Grammar School at Glasgow and later Glasgow University, and, in 1895, won a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. His first book, an edition of the Essays and Apothegms of Francis Lord Bacon (1894), had already been published. At Oxford, Buchan increased his literary reputation by having four more books published, including the historical romances Sir Quixote of the Moors (1895) and John Burnet of Barns (1898), by contributing to the Yellow Book, reading manuscripts for John Lane, publishers, and writing the history of his college.
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