William James de L'Aigle Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir (10 January 1916 – 29 June 2008), also known as "William Tweedsmuir" was an English peer and author of novels, short stories, memoirs and verse. He was the second son of the writer and Governor General of Canada, John Buchan.
Early life and career
Brought up at Elsfield Manor, outside Oxford, he frequently wrote poetry as a boy and appeared as "Bill" in his aunt Anna Masterton Buchan's popular novels, written under the pen-name "O. Douglas". His mother, Susan Charlotte Grosvenor, was a close relative of the Duke of Westminster. Visitors to the family home included a 15-year-old Jessica Mitford in the summer of 1932, T. E. Lawrence, a week before his death in 1935, and, that same year, Virginia Woolf, who called him "a simple".
Buchan attended Dumpton School in Dorset and the Dragon School in Oxford, then Eton College, and won the Harvey English verse prize there. At New College, Oxford, he "enjoyed a riotous year", according to an obituary in The Daily Telegraph, before dropping out. A different picture of his personality was given by an obituary in the Liverpool Daily Post, which described him during his schoolboy period as "a shy and solitary figure, and this mood continued into New College, Oxford". Visiting the set of Alfred Hitchcock's film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, a novel written by his father, the young man became interested in the movie industry, and Buchan senior got him a job working with Hitchcock at Gaumont-British Motion Picture Corporation. His salary as third assistant director was a token five shillings a week, so he lived off an allowance from his parents and lodged in London with the writer Elizabeth Bowen. It was becoming clear to him that he was being edged out of his job at Gaumont-British when a throat ailment resulted in an operation, causing him to leave sooner. To recuperate, he went to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where his father was serving as governor general. On the order of the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King, the young Buchan was barred, along with his brother Alastair, from a nightclub outside Ottawa. King disapproved of Buchan's parents, in particular regarding his father as a "libertine".
He then moved to New York in 1937, where his father provided him with literary connections. At one point he asked the critic Alexander Woollcott for a job but was told, "When I was a boy you were supposed to go to the bottom of the nearest tree and climb steadily until you got to the top."
At the suggestion of French film director and actor Michel Saint-Denis, Buchan visited Peggy Ashcroft, who had acted in The 39 Steps, and the pair began a two-year affair. Buchan then returned to England at the age of 21, but soon spent three months in Florence, Italy, and on his return met Kenneth de Courcy, publisher of Intelligence Digest and carried dispatches from de Courcy to France. On one occasion Buchan visited Otto von Habsburg, claimant to the throne of Austria, who questioned him closely about British politics.
In 1939 Buchan married Nesta Crozier, and in December 1940 the couple had a daughter, Perdita Buchan. He also co-founded The Pilot Press, which published his short (at 10,000 words) but admiring book on Winston Churchill (a stance at odds with that of his father), and later his brief history of the Royal Air Force. He learned of the death of his father in 1940 from a news hoarding.
War service
He enlisted in the Royal Air Force in February 1940 and joined No. 32 Squadron, flying Hawker Hurricanes on patrols in the Western Approaches. He was transferred to Egypt, then to No. 261 Squadron in Iraq. He flew over Palestine and served in the defence of Cyprus. He initially served in the ranks, and was a leading aircraftman prior to being commissioned as a pilot officer on probation on 20 January 1941 (with seniority from 14 January), the commission was confirmed, and he was promoted to war substantive flying officer, precisely a year later. After the Japanese invasion of Singapore, 261 Squadron was sent to reinforce the air force on Java. By the time it arrived at Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), on the carrier Indomitable, the pilots were ordered to fly to RAF Station China Bay on that island. On Easter Day, 5 April 1942, the squadron saw intense action against Japanese bombers from five aircraft carriers mounting a major attack against Colombo. When the Japanese force withdrew four days later, the carrier Hermes and two cruisers had been sunk, and only six of 261 Squadron's original 18 aircraft were serviceable. He was promoted to flight lieutenant on 20 January 1943.