John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH PC DL (/ˈbʌxən/; 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.

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.

Buchan won the Stanhope essay prize in 1897 and the Newdigate Prize for poetry the following year;[4] he was also elected as the president of the Oxford Union and had six of his works published, including a book of short stories (Grey Weather, 1899) and three of his first adventure novels (John Burnet of Barns, 1898; A Lost Lady of Old Years, 1899; The Half-Hearted, 1900)[5][6] Buchan had his first portrait painted in 1900 by a young Sholto Johnstone Douglas at around the time of his graduation from Oxford.

He 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.

In June 1916 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.

He complimented Winston Churchill's "services to the nation at the outbreak of war for which his countrymen can never be sufficiently grateful ... but he was usually selected to be blamed for decisions for which his colleagues were not less responsible.

[18] 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 (1899), A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys (1922) and Midwinter (1923).

"[19] The effects of the Great Depression in Scotland, and the subsequent high emigration from that country, also led him to reflect in the same speech: "We do not want to be like the Greeks, powerful and prosperous wherever we settle, but with a dead Greece behind us".

He believed that Gladstone had taught people to combat materialism, complacency, and authoritarianism; Buchan later wrote to Herbert Fisher, Stair Gillon, and Gilbert Murray that he was "becoming a Gladstonian Liberal.

[23] To a mass demonstration organized by the Jewish National Fund in 1934, Buchan described Zionism as "a great act of justice ... a reparation for the centuries of cruelty and wrong which have stained the record of nearly every Gentile people.

"[30] Kimball counters the first charge, writing that Buchan believed "in the civilizing mandate of the British Empire", concluding "the colonial adventure was an incalculable gain for the colonized", listing many of them and quoting Santayana's agreement.

[44] On 27 March 1935, Sir George Halsey Perley announced in the Canadian Parliament (in place of ailing Conservative Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett) that the King appointed Mr. John Buchan as the viceregal representative.

By the time Lord Tweedsmuir arrived in Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King had been sworn in as Prime Minister after the Liberal Party won the federal election held the previous month.

His knowledge and interest in increasing public awareness and accessibility to Canada's past resulted in Tweedsmuir being made the Champlain Society's second honorary president between 1938 and 1939.

As the year unfolded, it became evident that the new king planned to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, which caused much discontent throughout the Dominions and created a constitutional crisis.

[58] In January 1940, despite the war, Tweedsmuir invited influential Canadians to Rideau Hall, including Sam McLaughlin, President of General Motors of Canada, to support, as he wrote to his sister in Scotland, the development of "a Hollywood in British Columbia".

Tweedsmuir had conceived the royal tour before the coronation in 1937; according to the official event historian, Gustave Lanctot, the idea "probably grew out of the knowledge that at his coming Coronation, George VI was to assume the additional title of King of Canada," and he wished to demonstrate vividly Canada's status as an independent kingdom[60][61] by allowing Canadians to see "their King performing royal functions, supported by his Canadian ministers."

After a period of convalescence at Ruthin Castle and his home near Oxford, Tweedsmuir sailed back to Canada in October with a secured commitment that the royal couple would tour the country and visit the United States.

The royal visit to the United States was the high point of Tweedsmuir's efforts to develop a strong relationship with President Roosevelt, which he began soon after his arrival in Canada.

Those efforts to try to secure future peace and stability proved fruitless because the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, refused to countenance the idea.

[67] Tweedsmuir played a key role in securing British agreement to the final negotiations in mid-December 1939 and King acknowledged this in a letter, thank the Governor General "warmly for the help ... What a mischief there would have been had there been another moment's delay!

[69] Two surgeries by Doctor Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute were insufficient to save him, and his death on 11 February saw an outpouring of grief, gratitude and admiration, not only in Canada but throughout the English-speaking world.

In a radio eulogy, Mackenzie King stated: "In the passing of His Excellency, the people of Canada have lost one of the greatest and most revered of their Governors General, and a friend who, from the day of his arrival in this country, dedicated his life to their service.

"[71] The Governor General had formed a strong bond with his prime minister, even if it may have been built more on political admiration than friendship: Mackenzie King appreciated Buchan's "sterling rectitude and disinterested purpose.

[73] When 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.

"[75] Fifty years after Buchan's death, historian David Stafford wrote that "his impact on the genre was profound, and he has left a mark that has remained strong to this day.

[81] Buchan's 100 works and more include nearly 30 novels, seven collections of short stories, and biographies of Sir Walter Scott, Caesar Augustus, and Oliver Cromwell.

[82] The "last Buchan" (as Graham Greene entitled his appreciative review) was the 1941 novel Sick Heart River (American title: Mountain Meadow), in which a dying protagonist confronts the questions of the meaning of life in the Canadian wilderness.

[83][84] As Governor General and statesman, he helped strengthen relations between Britain and America, via his position in Canada as a prominent member of the British Commonwealth, at a critical period in world history.

"[92] John Buchan was and is an “inspiring example of a life lived for others”, as Ursula Buchan has written, from humble origins “without money or family influence, he nevertheless carved out a hugely successful writing and public career … His strengths, underpinned by a sincere and unwavering Christian faith, were his intelligence, humanity, clarity of thought, wit, moral and physical courage, a capacity to get on with everybody, from monarchs to miners, and an elegant prose style that appealed to a very wide readership.”[93]