| Admin History | George Buchanan followed his father into the diplomatic service in 1876 and initially served as an attaché under him in Vienna. In 1878 he moved to Rome, and the following year to Tokyo. Between 1882 and 1893 George worked in Vienna, Bern and at the Foreign Office in London. He was chargé d'affaires at Darmstadt from 1893, and between 1900 and 1910 served in Rome, Berlin, Sofia, and The Hague. He was knighted in 1909.
In 1910 George Buchanan was appointed as ambassador to Russia. In 1916 he was granted the freedom of the city of Moscow. He remained in Russia throughout the war and the revolution of March 1917, tried to use his closeness to Tsar Nicholas II to persuade him to make concessions, and made many warnings about the dangers ahead.
During the war, his wife Lady Georgina took over the organization of a hospital for wounded Russian soldiers in St Petersburg, supported by gifts of money and supplies from England, where sympathy was raised by the reports of the hardships in Russia. Her daughter Meriel Buchanan worked as a nurse in the hospital.
Sir George and his family left Russia in January 1918 soon after the Bolsheviks took power. Sir George was sent to Rome as ambassador in 1919, and retired in 1921.
After publishing some stories around the time of the outbreak of the First World War, Meriel turned to non-fiction, and described the last years of imperial Russia in a number of books and articles published in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1958 she published an account of her father's diplomatic career under the title Ambassador's Daughter. |
| Custodial History | The Collection was transferred to the University Library in 1986 and 2007. |