If you are going to write a biography of your grandfather, you need two things: an interesting grandfather and an aptitude for stringing words together. Ursula Buchan has both. The result ‘Beyond the Thirty-nine Steps’* is a page-turner.
Buchan exemplified Samuel Johnson’s wry comment that no man but a block-head ever wrote, except for money. Buchan was not a block-head. And he did not just write for money, but he had a serious need of income. His father was a Free Kirk minister and his talent took him into the midst of an aristocratic, land-owning moneyed élite in London. He had to have a serious income. He set to with his pen. Throughout his glittering career, -- administrator, propagandist, MP, governor-general, he wrote. Novels, biographies, histories poured from his pen. He wrote poetry. He wrote for children. His granddaughter tells it all.
A doughty Presbyterian, he happily worshipped in the parish church of Elsfield, where he lived after WW1. He accepted the fact that his mother would never be an Episcopalian but he appreciated the Book of Common Prayer as the best thing to come out of the Established Church south of the border. He became the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and he served as an elder in the Church he was born into. He took to mixing with top people as a duck takes to water. Stanley Baldwin valued his advice. But he never lost the common touch. He happily conversed in Lowland Scots with shepherds and respected his domestic staff. Careful with the pennies, he showed himself less than adroit when it came to contracts with fellow-directors of publishing houses. Generous to a fault and ready to help lame dogs over stiles, he put his considerable income to good effect.
He came from a generation that included McNeile, W.E. Johns, Conan Doyle and Arthur Ransome. In creating Richard Hannay, he brought his own hero to join Bulldog Drummond, Biggles, Sherlock Holmes and Swallows and Amazons in a company we almost accept as historical personages.
The Scots minister who officiated at his funeral quoted Buchan’s own words: ‘’There is still for every man the choice of two paths and conversion in its plain evangelical sense is still the greatest fact in my life.’ Without making a song and a dance of it, he lived a life of faith. His speeches (including those he wrote for other people) and his writings were the products of a Christian faith that showed itself in action. He was not faultless but he lived a life of extraordinary energy and achievement. His granddaughter has done him proud.
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Beyond the Thirty-nine Steps, by Ursula Buchan, Bloomsbury 492pp, $25.
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