The men who knew that he knew what he knew had found him - John Buchan

It was a very young man's confession of faith, and yet there was the glimmering of a truth at the back of it. It was my instinctive protest against the undue simplification of life. We are all a strange compound, and we shall never reach our full stature by starving certain parts of our nature of their due.

must have been very tired, for I was getting as full of silly prejudices as a minor poet.

Buchan was brought up in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and enjoyed many summer holidays with his grandparents in Broughton, in the Scottish Borders, where he developed a fascination of Scottish history and tales of old heroes, much like how his great idol Sir Walter Scott had done a century before. The young Buchan also developed a love of the local scenery and wildlife, which often feature in detail throughout his novels.