Stanley Owen Buckmaster, 1st Viscount Buckmaster, was born on January 9, 1861, in London, England.

He was a British lawyer and a Liberal politician. He was educated at Aldenham School and Christ Church, Oxford (1882). He was called to the Bar in 1884 at the Inner Temple. In 1902, he was appointed King's Counsel and joined Lincoln's Inn. He entered Parliament as a Liberal MP in the 1906 general election. Buckmaster held office as a Member of the Council of the Duchy of Lancaster, as Solicitor-General (1913-1915), and as Lord Chancellor (1915-1916). He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1915 and raised to the peerage as Baron Buckmaster. He later served as Chairman of the Governing Body of Imperial College of Science and Technology and as Chairman of the Political Honours Review Committee (1924-1929). He was awarded Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in 1930 and was made Viscount Buckmaster, of Cheddington in the County of Buckingham, in 1933. Buckmaster was awarded honorary degrees by the universities of Toronto (1925), Oxford, and Edinburgh (both 1933).

In 1889, he married Edith Augusta Lewin (1862–1935). He died on December 5, 1934, in London, England.