John Buchan Story Museum
About
The John Buchan Story occupies part of the ground floor of the Chambers Institution on Peebles High Street, and tells the life of a man whose career is almost too varied to be credible. Most people know John Buchan as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, the 1915 thriller that effectively invented the modern chase narrative and that Alfred Hitchcock filmed, very loosely, in 1935. Rather fewer know that its author was also a barrister, a colonial administrator in South Africa, Britain's Director of Information in the First World War, a Member of Parliament, a serious historian and biographer, and finally, as Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General of Canada, dying in office in Ottawa in 1940.
The museum sets the fiction within that life. Buchan wrote around a hundred books, of which the shockers, as he called them, were the smallest and least effortful part. His biographies of Montrose, Sir Walter Scott, Cromwell and Augustus were substantial works of scholarship, and novels such as Witch Wood and Sick Heart River show a writer of considerably greater range than the Richard Hannay adventures alone would suggest. He also wrote poetry in Scots, essays, short stories and a twenty-four volume history of the First World War composed while the war was still being fought.
Buchan's connection to Peebles runs through his mother's family, who farmed at Broughton in the upper Tweed valley, and through boyhood holidays in the surrounding hills. The Borders landscape saturates his fiction, and the museum's location places visitors in the middle of it. Displays cover his writing, his political and public career, his family and his Canadian years, drawing on editions, photographs, personal items and archive material.
The museum is staffed entirely by volunteers from in and around Peebles, and its season runs from 1 April to 31 October, with mornings on Tuesday to Saturday and a longer day on Monday. Admission is free, though donations are appreciated. Outside the regular season the volunteers are happy to open for groups and for anyone seeking access to the archives. The museum shares the Chambers Institution with the Tweeddale Museum and Gallery, a separate institution covering local history and art, so a single stop on the High Street covers both.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Note the season and the hours carefully. The museum opens 1 April to 31 October only, with mornings Tuesday to Saturday and a full day on Monday — an afternoon arrival midweek will find it shut.
- It is closed on Beltane Saturday, 20 June 2026, for the town's festival week, which is itself worth seeing if you happen to be in Peebles then.
- Contact the museum in advance if you are travelling outside the season or want archive access. The volunteers are genuinely willing to open specially for groups and researchers.
- Take in the Tweeddale Museum and Gallery in the same building, a separate institution covering local history and art including its notable plaster casts.
- Talk to the volunteers. They know Buchan well and the museum is much richer if you engage rather than reading the panels alone.
- Read The Thirty-Nine Steps beforehand if you have not — it takes an evening and makes the moorland displays and the Borders setting far more resonant.
- Walk out along the Tweed to Neidpath Castle, about twenty minutes upstream, for the landscape that formed Buchan's imagination.
- Peebles has no railway station; Borders Buses services from Edinburgh are frequent and take about an hour, making a car-free day easy.
Highlights
The Thirty-Nine Steps
Written in 1914 while Buchan was ill in bed and published in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps sold enormously to soldiers in the trenches and established a template the thriller has followed ever since: an ordinary man wrongly accused, pursued by both criminals and police, fleeing across country with a secret he cannot prove.
Hitchcock's 1935 film, which retains little of the plot beyond the premise, made it permanently famous. The museum covers the book's composition, its extraordinary reception and the long afterlife of adaptations that followed, including the stage version that has run for years on the strength of playing the whole thing for laughs with four actors.
An Improbable Public Career
Buchan's life reads like a summary of the British establishment between 1900 and 1940. He was called to the bar, served in Lord Milner's administration in South Africa after the Boer War, ran British propaganda as Director of Information in the First World War, sat as Member of Parliament for the Scottish Universities from 1927, served as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and was created Baron Tweedsmuir in 1935.
That he wrote around a hundred books alongside all of this is the genuinely astonishing part, and it was achieved by a man who suffered from chronic and often disabling digestive illness for most of his adult life.
Governor General of Canada
Buchan's final office, from 1935 until his death in 1940, was Governor General of Canada, where he proved unusually popular, travelling widely including to the Arctic, championing Canadian literature and founding the Governor General's Literary Awards, which continue today. He also handled the delicate constitutional and diplomatic business of the abdication crisis and the approach of war.
He died in office in Ottawa in February 1940 and was given a state funeral.
The museum covers the Canadian years in detail, and they are the part of his life least familiar to British visitors.
The Borders in Buchan's Fiction
Buchan's connection to Peeblesshire came through his mother's family, who farmed at Broughton in the upper Tweed valley, and through boyhood holidays spent walking the surrounding hills. That landscape runs through his writing, from the moorland pursuit sequences of the Hannay novels to the seventeenth-century Borders setting of Witch Wood, which many readers regard as his best novel.
The museum's position in Peebles means visitors can walk out of the door and into the country the books describe, which very few literary museums can offer so directly.
Collections
The John Buchan Story holds a collection covering the life and work of John Buchan, first Baron Tweedsmuir (1875-1940), occupying part of the ground floor of the Chambers Institution in Peebles. Displays cover his fiction, above all The Thirty-Nine Steps and the Richard Hannay novels, alongside his substantial output as historian and biographer; his public career as barrister, colonial administrator in South Africa, Director of Information during the First World War, Member of Parliament for the Scottish Universities and Lord High Commissioner; and his final years as Governor General of Canada from 1935 until his death in office in 1940.
Holdings include editions, photographs, personal items, family material and archives, which the volunteers make available to researchers by arrangement.
The Writer
Buchan's fiction and non-fiction, from The Thirty-Nine Steps and the Hannay novels through Witch Wood and Sick Heart River to the biographies of Montrose, Scott, Cromwell and Augustus.
The Public Man
Buchan's career in law, colonial administration, wartime propaganda, Parliament and the Church of Scotland, culminating in his years as Governor General of Canada and his death in office in 1940.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.