George Buchanan
George Buchanan (9 January 1904, Kilwaughter, County Antrim, Northern Ireland - 28 June 1989, London) was a writer of journals, novels, plays, poems, autobiographies and essays.
Biography
George Henry Perrott Buchanan was the middle child of the Rev. Charles Henry Leslie Buchanan (1863–1939) and Florence Buchanan, née Moore (1874–1948). His older brother was Richard Moore (1901–1966) and his younger sister, Florence Mary (1905–1987), was known as Biddy.
He was educated at Larne Grammar School (where he became friends with the Irish post, John Lyle Donaghy) and Campbell College, Belfast.
He started his career in journalism in the early 1920s at the Belfast Northern Whig before moving to London in 1925 and working with The Graphic, The Sunday Times, The Outline (where he was assistant editor) and the Daily Chronicle. From 1930-35, he was a sub-editor on The Times and became a columnist and drama critic for the News Chronicle 1935-38. He also contributed to The Times Literary Supplement in the days of unsigned reviews.
When war broke out in 1939, Buchanan went to live for some months in St. Ives, Cornwall (alongside artists Alfred Wallis, Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth), and in 1940, he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) where he served as an operations officer in RAF Coastal Command between 1940 and 1945. During his service he went to Sierra Leone to undertake operational liaison with the Free French in French Equatorial Africa. He returned to England in 1943 to work with US squadrons in Devon and Pembrokeshire to attack U-boats at night in the Bay of Biscay and provide anti-submarine cover for the Normandy landings.
After the war he lived in Limavady, broadcasting for BBC radio and also acting as chairman of the Northern Ireland Town and Country Development Committee from 1949 to 1953, .
In 1953, Buchanan moved permanently to London. In 1954 he became a member of the executive council of the European Society of Culture (SEC) based in Venice and went on to become president of its London centre.
Published works
Buchanan's first published work was his poem An Irish pastoral which appeared in the The Dublin Magazine in 1924. The poem was admired by Northern Irish writer Forrest Reid beginning a lasting friendship between them.
His journal Passage Through the Present[1] was published in 1932 after which he wrote six novels. One of them, Rose Forbes: the Biography of an Unknown Woman[2] became a cause célèbre on its publication in 1937, prompting V. S. Pritchett to say, "I think most novelists ought to get hold of a copy."
His first volume of autobiography, Green Seacoast (1959),[3] was about his childhood in Kilwaughter Rectory while his early years as a journalist were featured in Morning Papers (1965).[4]
His first collection of verse, Bodily Responses,[5] appeared in 1958 soon followed by Conversation with Strangers (1961).[6] He published seven collections of poetry including Annotations (1970)[7] and Inside Traffic (1976)[8]
He wrote four plays, notably in 1960 A Trip to the Castle and in 1965 War Song. All four were produced on the London stage.
The Politics of Culture published in 1977 was a collection of essays which explored his ideas around the need for "poetic values" in society and for poets to be the new "revolutionaries".
A special issue of The Honest Ulsterman focussing on the life and works of Buchanan, edited by Frank Ormsby, was published in June 1978.[9]
Family life
Buchanan married four times.
- Winifred Mary (married 1938 - dissolved 1945), younger daughter of Alfred H. Corn (d.1916);
- Noel Pulleyne Ritter (married 1949, d. 1951), younger daughter of William G. Beasley (d. 1921) and widow of Major John H.Ritter, R.A.
- The Hon. Janet Hampden Margesson (married 1949, d. 1968), eldest daughter of David Margesson, 1st Viscount Margesson, and Frances H. Leggett of New York, USA.
- Sandra Gail McCloy. m. 1974
He had two children with his their wife, Florence Buchanan, b. 18 February 1955, advertising creative director, consultant and film-maker, and Emily Buchanan, b. 7 October 1958, BBC correspondent and presenter.
Death
Buchanan died on 28 June 1989, aged 85, at The Royal Star and Garter Home, Richmond for Disabled Soldiers, Sailors & Airmen, in Richmond, Surrey. He was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium.
Buchanan’s literary archive is in Special Collections & Archives in the McClay Library at Queens University Belfast.
References
- ↑ George, Buchanan (1933). Passage through the present: chiefly notes from a journal (1st ed.). New York: E.P. Dutton & co., inc. OL 6288266M. Search this book on
- ↑ "Rose Forbes; the biography of an unknown woman | WorldCat.org". search.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ OpenLibrary.org. "Green seacoast. by Buchanan, George | Open Library". Open Library. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ OpenLibrary.org. "Morning papers by Buchanan, George | Open Library". Open Library. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ OpenLibrary.org. "Bodily responses by Buchanan, George | Open Library". Open Library. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ OpenLibrary.org. "Conversation with strangers by Buchanan, George | Open Library". Open Library. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ "Annotations | WorldCat.org". search.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ OpenLibrary.org. "Inside traffic by Buchanan, George | Open Library". Open Library. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
- ↑ "HU Mar - Jun 78". www.huarchive.co. Retrieved 2025-05-04.
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