Thirty-nine steps to social success

From Perth to the peerage, novelist John Buchan was the ultimate Scotsman on the make. By Anne de Courcy

TBEYOND THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by Ursula Buchan 512pp, Bloomsbury, £25, ebook £15.11

oday John Buchan is more famous as the author of The ThirtyNine Steps and Greenmantle than for the rest of his astonishing career – a man who, from a childhood spent amid muddy lanes and shabby people, rose to eminence and terms of friendship with writers, royalty, parliamentarians and diplomats, winding up as Governor-General of Canada and a peer. It is unsurprising that his granddaughter Ursula Buchan, with unrivalled access to his letters and papers, now wishes to set this straight.

Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps is a salutary tale. JB (as his family called him) wrote more than 100 books, and about

1,000 articles for newspapers and magazines, as well as becoming a barrister, literary critic, war correspondent, MP and proconsul. Ms Buchan, herself an author of 18 books, details all this fully. But although the reader gasps at the sheer amount of energy and drive, let alone ambition, it must have involved, the story of relentless hard work does not necessarily an enthralling book make.

Born in Perth on August 26 1875, JB was short, slight and fair, with an austere, principled face dominated by a wedge-shaped nose. He loved the countryside and field sports, was physically tough although plagued by digestive problems all his life, and gifted with immense determination and a happy knack of getting on with almost everyone. He began to write early; he was only 17 when his Angling in Still Waters was published (he was an expert fisherman).

He first attended the University of Glasgow, from which he got a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford. The years spent there were to prove the launch pad for his future. In those days, Oxford was a near-monastic society, where it was accepted that young men formed close, almost homoerotic friendships, in part because there were so few women around, in part because, in general, male friendships were considered to be on a superior plane.

J B took full advantage of all that Oxford had to offer, making friendships with the sort of men he would otherwise never have met, from Aubrey Herbert to Raymond Asquith. In keeping, he acquired a “Varsity” accent (laughed at by his Scottish family whenever he went home). When, in 1895, his family was given the right to bear heraldic arms – in other words, to be considered as gentlefolk – he was delighted. It was yet another step up.

All the time, he worked extraordinarily hard. He won a scholarship for his last year and wrote and edited constantly for publishers. He became president of the Union and was picked by the Oxford magazine Isis as one of its Idols. “His powers of work are remarkable, and inspire awe in his friends,” said Isis. “We know of no one who has had more success, or deserved it better.”

By now, he was spending part of the summer vacation grouseshooting on the estates of rich friends. He was an engaging companion who loved meeting people and liked to tell Scottish stories in a broad Scots accent, although discussing money and sex embarrassed him. Women hardly figured in his life. When Aubrey Herbert’s uncle, Lord Cowper, invited him to stay for the weekend in a large house party, this took him into the heart of both political and aristocratic circles.

Yet again, it was onwards and upwards. J B was chosen by Lord Milner to become one of his “Kindergarten” – the group of men, mostly young, who served in the South African Civil Service under Lord Milner as High Commissioner. Most, including Buchan, went on to higher things.

In 1905, when he was 30, he met 23-year-old Susie Grosvenor, an aristocratic blonde brought