John Buchan and the First World War: Fact into Fiction

John Buchan, best remembered today as a novelist, was also a man of affairs, historian, and propagandist. During the First World War these attributes were the basis of his public reputation, but he did not cease to write fiction, and the war permeated the novels which he wrote after it. This article explores the ways in which Buchan exploited his privileged knowledge of the facts to write his fictions. It also considers Buchan's thinking both about the war's conduct and the function of propaganda within it.