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His life & work:

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Dear Mr Hogg,
     I have to acknowledge with much pride, the high honour which the Irvine Burns Club has conferred on me, and hope to live up to the high literary standard of the honorary membership revealed by the brief list you have sent me.
     With sincere wishes for the continued eminence of the Club in Burns circles.
     I am
     Yours truly
     D McNaught

Mr Hogg was Secretary of Irvine Burns Club at that time.

His life & work:

< biography to follow >

My Dear Mr Hogg,
     I received your good letter. Please say to the Irvine Burns Club that I feel highly honoured, and I don’t know when in all my life more delighted.
     If all goes well will be in Irvine about the 5th of June. Kind good wishes to all,
     Yours Sincerely
     R. B. Mantell

Mr Hogg was Secretary of Irvine Burns Club at that time.

His life & work:

< biography to follow >

Dear Mr Hogg
     I have received your letter intimating that the Irvine Burns Club has done me the honour to elect me an Hon Member of the Club.
     I return my most grateful thanks to the Club & have pleasure in accepting membership.
     Yours very truly
     David Paulin

Mr Hogg was Secretary of Irvine Burns Club at that time.

His life & work:

Sir George Younger, 1st Viscount Younger of Leckie, was born in Alloa. He left college at 17, on his father's death, to run the family brewery. He was MP for Ayr Burghs 1906-22, and Chairman of the Conservative Party 1916-23. In 1922 he was central in breaking up the Lloyd George coalition government and replacing it with the Conservative governments of Bonar Law and Baldwin. He was created a peer in 1923. He held the position of Treasurer of the Conservative Party from then until his death.

In the tradition of his uncle, William McEwan, Viscount Younger combined a career as a politician with that of a successful brewer.

Dear Mr Hogg
     Will you very kindly thank the members of the Irvine Burns Club for their kindness in electing me as an Honorary Member of the Club.
     I appreciate the compliment very highly, & I hope I may have the privilege of meeting you all in the not too distant future.
     I have no intention of cutting myself adrift from so many friends in Ayr & Irvine who have been so consistently kind to me for so many years & I am only too proud that you think me worthy of enrolment amongst you.
    Yours very sincerely
     Geo Younger

Mr Hogg was Secretary of Irvine Burns Club at that time.

His life & work:

< biography to follow >

Dear Sir,
     It was a very great pleasure to me to receive your letter the other day, intimating my election as an Honorary Member of the Irvine Burns Club. I greatly appreciate the honour, thus done to me, and trust to merit it by further work in the interests of our native tongue. I shall be glad if you will convey my thanks and good wishes to the Club at the first convenient opportunity; no doubt you will have the usual gathering in honour of the 25th.
     I shall assuredly endeavour to pay a visit to Irvine when I am next in the North.
     Yours sincerely
     W. A. Craigie

His life & work:

John Buchan had an entry in 'Who's Who' by the age of 24, describing himself as 'undergraduate', and graduated from Oxford as an already successful author. His friends there were wealthy, but he was not, so he supported himself by writing - a career which resulted not only in the thrillers for which he became famous, but in biographies, short stories, novels about the supernatural, and poetry. Previously, he had grown up in Fife, spent holidays wirth grandparents in the Borders, attended Hutcheson's Grammar School, and studied Classics at Glasgow University. After Oxford, he spent some years in the colonial adminstration of South Africa, and married in 1907; his war work included being a 'Times' correspondent, writing for the Propaganda Bureau, and writing speeches for Sir Douglas Haig.

His most famous book, 'The Thirty-Nine Steps', appeared in 1915 - in three months it sold 25,000 copies and has never been out of print since. While the author Erskine Childers had produced the first novel of suspense ('The Riddle of the Sands') in 1903, it was the works of Buchan that inspired a century of spy fiction.

John Buchan's work was rooted in his own experience of the years leading up to and during the First World War. These years were for him, as for so many others, marked by personal sadness - his brother Alastair killed in his first action on the Western Front in 1917, a close friend the same day in the same battle, and other friends too. His writing articulated his fears about the modern world and he had no time for the decadent styles emerging in the 1920s. He moved to Elsfield near Oxford, finding the retreat he needed. His nomination as an honorary member follows closely on, and may have been prompted by, his 'History of the Great War', published in 1921-22.

Buchan was later drawn back into public life, firstly in 1927 as MP for the Scottish Universities - he would have liked to be Secretary of State for Scotland, but was not enough of a party man. in 1931 he was awarded the Companion of Honour. In 1935, he was appointed Governor General of Canada and created Lord Tweedsmuir of Elsfield. In that year too, Hitchcock invited him to the opening of the film 'The 39 Steps' - he seems to have accepted the director's need to change details of the story for the differenrt medium. He continued his writing throughout these years in public life. His last novel, 'Sick Heart River' in 1939, is very introspective, and as powerful as the earlier thrillers.

His death in 1940 was front page news around the world. John Buchan had achieved huge success in both public and literary fields. Regarding the latter, in a 2008 TV appreciation, Anne Widdicombe reflected that "a century after its writing, his work still has application to the mainstream of life - that is the ultimate tribute".

Dear Mr Hogg,
     I am greatly honoured by your letter of 15th January. I count it no small privilege to be counted elected [manuscript alteration] an honorary member of one of the oldest and most famous of all Burns Clubs. If ever I am in Ayrshire you may be sure I will take advantage of your kind invitation and inspect your archives.
     Will you offer to the members of the Club, on my behalf, my best thanks.
     Yours sincerely,
     John Buchan

This letter was, apart from the alteration and the signature, typed.

His life & work:

< biography to follow >

Dear Sir,
     I am in receipt of your letter informing me that I have been elected an Hon. Member of the Irvine Burns Club, & I write to express my appreciation of the honour you have done me. In the event of my visiting your ancient Burgh I shall not fail to pay my respects to the Club
     I am
     Yours faithfully
     Frederick Macmillan

Addressed to Provost R M Hogg, Irvine

His life & work:

Dr J Pittendrigh Macgillivray, R.S.A., LL.D., was apprentice to sculptor Wm Brodie, R.S.A., Edinburgh, and moved to Glasgow in 1875. He was the only sculptor among the talented young painters later known as the Glasgow School. He was a founder and editor of The Scottish Arts Review. In 1896 he returned to Edinburgh, designing his own house with a large studio.

John Spiers belonged to a family of merchants in Irvine. He left Irvine as a young man and enjoyed a long, successful and, equally importantly, honourable career as an underwriter and insurance broker at Blythswood Sq., Glasgow. In 1896 he funded the Irvine statue of Robert Burns - this was not only a fitting symbol of Irvine's respect for the national Bard, but also reflected the short but important time which Burns spent in Irvine in 1781.

To read our description of the statue and the events of the 1896 unveiling day, return to our main menus and select Burns in Irvine > the 1896 Burns statue.

Macgillivray was described at the time as "the most virile and original exponent of the newer school of sculpture", as he sought to establish a more modem style. He was appointed Sculptor Royal for Scotland in 1921.

The Irvine statue led to a number of large public commissions, culminating in the grandiose Gladstone Memorial in Edinburgh. Macgillivray, also known as a painter and a poet, was an ardent Nationalist, an authority on the Clans and their tartans, and an Honorary Member of the Scottish Pipers Society. He was a man of wide culture, varied interests, and vigorous ideas.

Dear Sir,
     I very much regret to discover that your letter of the 17th Jan. intimating that I had been elected an Hon. member of the above named club, has quite inadvertently got laid aside unacknowledged. I went from home at the time it arrived - and found much to do on my return.
     Please convey my best thanks for the honour the members have done me. I appreciate highly the consideration they have shown me, and I hope I may be able to join them in the Immortal Memory one day.
     Yours faithfully
     Pittendrigh Macgillivray

The letter is addressed to Mr Hogg, Secretary of Irvine Burns Club at that time.

The address is embossed, so does not appear on photocopies.

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