John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, was born on August 26, 1875, in Perth, Scotland.

He was a Scottish novelist, historian, biographer, editor, and Unionist politician. He attended Hutchesons' Boys' Grammar School, Glasgow University, and Brasenose College, Oxford. Buchan won the Stanhope essay prize in 1897, the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1898 and was elected as the president of the Oxford Union. In 1901, he entered a career in diplomacy, becoming the private secretary to Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner for Southern Africa. Upon his return to London, he entered a partnership in the Thomas Nelson & Son publishing company and became editor of The Spectator. With the outbreak of the First World War, Buchan wrote for the British War Propaganda Bureau and worked as a correspondent in France for The Times. In the mid-1920s, he became president of the Scottish Historical Society and a trustee of the National Library of Scotland. In 1935, he was appointed to the Order of St. Michael and St. George and was elevated to the peerage by King George V as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. The same year he was sworn in as Governor-General of Canada. He established the first proper library at Rideau Hall and founded the Governor General's Literary Awards. He published over 100 works, e.g., "Sir Quixote of the Moors" (1895), a spy-thriller "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (1915), and the autobiography "Memory Hold-the-Door" (1940).

In 1907, he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor (1882–1977). He died on February 11, 1940, in Montreal, Quebec.