15th out of 18 books
—
5 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Memory Hold-the-Door: The Autobiography of John Buchan” as Want to Read:
Memory Hold-the-Door: The Autobiography of John Buchan
by
John Buchan
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875-1940) completed his autobiography not long before his death. A highly accomplished man, his was a life of note. Although now known by many chiefly as an author, he was also an historian, Unionist politican and Governor General of Canada. Although he stated that it was not strictly an autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door provides a ref
...more
Published
(first published January 1st 1940)
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Memory Hold-the-Door
,
please sign up
.
Be the first to ask a question about Memory Hold-the-Door
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
132)
I picked this up after reading that John F. Kennedy considered it one of his favorite books and after finishing it I can see why. John Buchan, who held the awesomely P.G. Wodehouse-esque peerage of 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, was a pioneering Scottish crime fiction author who became Governor General of Canada back in 1935 when it was necessary to import bored British aristocrats for the position instead of bored local personalities. This is his memoir, and I took away two main things from it. First, h
...more
As a fan of Buchan since boyhood, I recommend this book to all true believers. Doubt it would be of much interest to others except maybe those interested in the pre-war Oxford and Country Houses set which included philosophers, socialites, poets, future cabinet ministers and eccentrics of all classes.
vide
Julian Grenfell
. For better or worse, I'm one such -- not of the set, mind you, but interested in it. Still, it's the story of the Scot minister's son making who channeled R.L. Stevenson that
...more
Memoirs come in a couple of different flavors. One of the most popular is the score-settling of which Hemingway's Moveable Feast is a prime example.
This one is really the total opposite, which makes it pretty boring. Not just because Buchan is complimenting famous people, but he is complimenting famous people whose relevance is a bit obscure. If you uncle from New Mexico told you about how great his high school classmates were, the connection between you (the reader) and the story would be a lit ...more
This one is really the total opposite, which makes it pretty boring. Not just because Buchan is complimenting famous people, but he is complimenting famous people whose relevance is a bit obscure. If you uncle from New Mexico told you about how great his high school classmates were, the connection between you (the reader) and the story would be a lit ...more
Beautifully written reminiscences with fascinating sidelights on history. I'd no idea that Buchan had been an assistant to Lord Milner during the Boer War. Or that he'd been a co-owner of the publisher Nelson. And the people he knew! Apparently this book was a favourite of JFK's. I can see why.
This book didn't exist in the database, so I added it, but I'm quite sure it hasn't been published in its own right. Pilgrim's Rest is Buchan's unfinished work on fly-fishing, is included at the end of my edition of Memory-Hold-the-Door. It can't be more than 30 pages or so, and it's a great pity he didn't live long enough to finish it.
It's extremely good.
It's extremely good.
Always interesting to read the perceptions of past generations. This was no different. Some parts were long winded, but I thought it was a good book.
A really good read by one of the best writers of the 20th century.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
John Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) was a British novelist and public servant who combined a successful career as an author of thrillers, historical novels, histories and biographies with a parallel career in public life. At the time of his death he was Governor-General of Canada.
Buchan was born in Scotland and educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to Sou ...more
More about John Buchan...
Buchan was born in Scotland and educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to Sou ...more
“This preoccupation with the classics was the happiest thing that could have befallen me. It gave me a standard of values. To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education. ... Faulty though my own practice has always been, I learned sound doctrine - the virtue of a clean, bare style, of simplicity, of a hard substance and an austere pattern. Above all the Calvinism of my boyhood was broadened, mellowed, and also confirmed. For if the classics widened my sense of the joy of life they also taught its littleness and transience; if they exalted the dignity of human nature they insisted upon its frailties and the aidos with which the temporal must regard the eternal. I lost then any chance of being a rebel, for I became profoundly conscious of the dominion of unalterable law. ... Indeed, I cannot imagine a more precious viaticum than the classics of Greece and Rome, or a happier fate than that one's youth should be intertwined with their world of clear, mellow lights, gracious images, and fruitful thoughts. They are especially valuable to those who believe that Time enshrines and does not destroy, and who do what I am attempting to do in these pages, and go back upon and interpret the past. No science or philosophy can give that colouring, for such provide a schematic, and not a living, breathing universe. And I do not think that the mastery of other literatures can give it in a like degree, for they do not furnish the same totality of life - a complete world recognisable as such, a humane world, yet one untouchable by decay and death...”
—
2 likes
More quotes…
