“He wrote some of the most sparkling prose I've ever read, prose that touches upon humanity's deepest preoccupations. Reading my grandfather's books has informed and enriched my life.” (Ursula Buchan)
John Buchan was a considerable scholar, and at various times a lawyer, colonial administrator, magazine editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of wartime information films, as well as a member of the Parliament and government. He wrote more than a hundred books in total, all of this while suffering from a sever illness for most of his adult life. He surely is a true inspiration of loyalty and devotion to all kinds of people. Regarding some of his most important political contributions, John Buchan was a Governor General of Canada and First Baron of Tweedsmuir.
“The Thirty-Nine Steps” was an immediate critical and commercial success and became an ideal and very popular reading for men, certainly in the army. Short, exciting, escapist, describing how one man helped to save Britain's defence secrets from German spies, an attractive idea to men stuck in the trenches. There has been film and on-stage versions of the book as well. According to Ursula Buchan, her grandfather’s most lasting achievement was the impact that “Thirty-Nine Steps” had on Alfred Hitchcock, who was a very famous film director. Alfred Hitchcock’s film came out in 1935 and made him famous in America for the first time. "The Thirty-Nine Steps" is a gripping adventure and one of the earliest examples of the "man-on-the-run" thriller genre, becoming a classic in the realm of espionage fiction. The Thirty-Nine Steps is a tense, fast-moving narrative and contains wonderful descriptions of landscape and weather for which the author had become renowned.
Ursula Buchan did plenty of careful research before writing her book. She had access to two big archives of letters, scrapbooks, and diaries: one of them in Scotland and the other one in Canada. She spent a long time reading those, as well as John Buchan’s books. “Writing this kind of thing is just a lot of hard work. I used to get up, I would work, start at 6, I would work for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. But I loved it, it was just great fun, it really was. And I felt I had, by the end of it, I felt I had done something that he would have approved of. I hope he would have been proud of me. Most grandparents are proud of their grandchildren. I certainly did my best. But it's not something you should enter into lightly, because it takes over your life. It took over my life for four years.” (Ursula Buchan)
During her research, Ursula Buchan discovered remarkable information: John Buchan was a very influential person, his work and propaganda were significant in World War I. Furthermore, he was very close to the American president before the Second World War and just at the beginning of it before he died. John Buchan had an excellent understanding of human nature; all aspects of his life and work have something to tell us now because he had an extraordinary capacity to understand how people think.