John Buchan

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875 to 1940), was a Scottish novelist, historian, British Army officer and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada. Born in Perth and brought up in Fife, he studied at Glasgow and Oxford, won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1898, and practised as a barrister before joining the publisher Thomas Nelson and Sons. He wrote more than a hundred books, including nearly thirty novels and biographies of Sir Walter Scott, Augustus and Oliver Cromwell, and is best known for the spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, published in 1915, which introduced his hero Richard Hannay. He won the 1928 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography of the Marquess of Montrose, and as Governor General founded the Governor General's Literary Awards.