John Buchan, 2nd Baron Tweedsmuir
John Buchan | |
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Succeeded by | William Buchan |
Personal details | |
Born | 25 November 1911 |
Died | 20 June 1996 | (aged 84)
Spouse(s) | Priscilla Grant (died 1978) Lady Jean Grant (m. 1980) |
Parent(s) | Susan Charlotte Grosvenor |
Alma mater | Eton College Brasenose College, Oxford |
John Norman Stuart Buchan, 2nd Baron Tweedsmuir
Early life
Buchan was born in
He was educated at Eton and in 1930 he went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he graduated with a fourth class degree in History.[1] While at Brasenose College he was an active member of the Brasenose College Boat Club, and rowed in the College's 1st Torpid. As an undergraduate, he was also a close friend of John Gorton.
Buchan subsequently went on to study at the Dundee School of Economics.
Military career
After a period in the
In September 1939 at the onset of war, he joined the Governor General's Foot Guards in Canada, and was with the first Canadian troopship to reach England in December 1939. In February 1940 his father died and he became Baron Tweedsmuir. In 1941 he saw active service with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (with whom he started as second in command), ultimately in Sicily for which he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 New Year Honours.[3]
Farley Mowat, who served as an infantryman in the HPE Regiment, described Tweedsmuir, newly in command (due to his predecessor, Bruce Sutcliff, having been killed). Mowat's account is in his war memoir, "And No Birds Sang" (1975, 2003). The task was to take Assoro, an ancient, and well-fortified, promontory blocking the regiment's advance.
"Barely thirty years of age, soft-spoken, kindly, with a slight tendency to stutter, he was a tall fair-haired English romantic out of another age . . . his famous father's perhaps. 'Tweedie,' as we called him behind his back, had as a youth sought high adventure [in the Arctic, the African veldt, Canada]. But until this hour real adventure in the grand tradition had eluded him.
Going forward on his own reconnaissance that afternoon in company with the new second-in-command, Major 'Ack Ack' Kennedy, Tweedsmuir looked up at the towering colossus of Assoro with the visionary eye of a
The operation succeeded. Tweedsmuir was later wounded in Sicily. He was twice
Scientific career
He led scientific expeditions to Libya and St Ninians Island and was 21 years President of the British Schools Exploring Society. He was promoted to be a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1964.[4]
Later life
In later life he lived in Kingston House at Kingston Bagpuize in rural Oxfordshire.
He returned to Scotland for the final two months of his life and died in a small cottage in North Berwick.
He had no male heir, so upon his death the barony passed to his younger brother.
Family
He married
With Priscilla, who sat in the House of Lords suo jure as The Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, they jointly created the Protection of Birds Act 1954.[2]
Positions held
- Rector of Aberdeen University1948-51
- Chairman of the Joint East and Central African Board 1950-52
- President of the Institute of Rural Life 1951-85
- President of the Federation of Commonwealth and British Empire Chambers of Commerce 1955-7
- President of the Institute of Export 1964-7
- Company Director of BOAC.
- Company Director of Dalgety plc
- Company Director of Sun Alliance
- Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority (United Kingdom) 1971-4
- Chairman of the Council on Tribunals 1973-80
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Publications
- Always a Countryman (1953)
- One Man's Happiness (1968)
References
- ^ a b "Royal Society of Edinburgh" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2006. Retrieved 17 November 2009.
- ^ Independent.co.uk. 23 October 2011.
- ^ "No. 36917". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 January 1945. p. 681.
- ^ "No. 43502". The London Gazette (Supplement). 27 November 1964. p. 10228.
- ISBN 090219884X. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
- ^ Debrett's Peerage. 1985. p. 1196.