Gunn was an active member of the forerunner of today's Scottish National Party, he used the Highlands of Scotland as his background for many of his novels.
Neil Miller Gunn, one of the greatest writers of Scottish literature, was born in 1891 in Dunbeath, a small fishing village on the east coast of Caithness, Scotland’s most northerly county.
He was born at a time when the traditional Highland way of life was declining and his father a fisherman and his mother a domestic servant struggled to support Neil and his eight brothers and sisters.
In 1907, he moved away from his beloved Dunbeath and moved to London after joining the Civil Service. However, within a few years he was back in Scotland as a Customs and Excise officer, serving there during World War One.
During the 1920’s, he started writing short stories and in 1926, Grey Coast his first novel was published. By that time he had married Jessie (Daisy) Dallas the daughter of an Inverness jeweller and had set up home at the Glen Mhor Distillery in Inverness where he was the resident customs officer.
It was during this period that his interest in politics developed and he became an active member of the National Party of Scotland, the forerunner of today’s Scottish National Party.
The publication of Highland River in 1937, a novel that drew heavily on his experiences as a young boy growing up in the Highlands of Scotland allowed him to retire from the Civil Service and write full time. Consequently he moved from the distillery to the small town of Strathpeffer.
The tone of Highland River and the later Silver Darlings (a story about herring fishing)was much more upbeat after the rather bleak outlook of his earlier works.
He published, The Atoms of Delight, his last book in 1956 after taking an interest in Zen Buddhism. Neil Gunn had written a total of 26 books by the time of his death at the age of 81 on 15 January 1973.
Further Research:
For those who wish to research the life of this remarkable man and the county he called home there are a number of options. If you have the opportunity why not visit the Dunbeath Heritage Centre which gives an insight into the world that shaped the writing of Neil Gunn..
For all things Gunn, the Clan Gunn Society Museum is based in an old hilltop church at Latheron only a few miles from Dunbeath and is also well worth a visit.
