| One of the foremost Scottish novelist of the 20th century,
Gunn wrote twenty novels which are treasured for their perceptive evocation of Highland
life and landscape. His writing embodies his own concept that ‘a novelist cannot
write about people in a vacuum. They must have background, and the background becomes part
of them’. Along with friends like Naomi
Mitchison, he shared a vision of Scotland as an independent and prosperous country, and
this vision also informs his fiction. He was born in Dunbeath in Caithness in 1891, and
during his long life of 82 years lived in many different parts of Scotland, such as
Kirkcudbrightshire in the south-west where he went to school. As a young man he spent some
years in London, returning to Scotland in 1910 to work as a Customs and Excise Inspector
in the Highlands. His short stories began to be published in the 1920s, and he soon gained
popularity and recognition as a writer closely associated with the Scottish ‘Literary
Renaissance’.
In 1937, heartened by the success of Highland River,
Gunn gave up the 'day job' and became a full-time writer. He stayed for many years at
Braefarm House on the road between Dingwall and Strathpeffer where he wrote some of his
best books including The Silver Darlings (1941), The Green Isle of the Great
Deep (1944) The Lost Chart (1944) and The Shadow (1948). His lively
interest in the social history of Scotland resulted in many fine books, including Butcher's
Broom, set during the Highland Clearances. However, metaphysical and spiritual
questions are almost always at the heart of his work and some of his later books,
particularly The Atom of Delight (1956), show the influence of Zen Buddhism. Neil
Gunn brought an original mind to bear on a wide range of settings and situations, and he
also tested various genres, for instance detective fiction in the shape of Bloodhunt
(1952) and, Whisky and Scotland, a history, brims with Gunn's convivial and
knowledgeable love of a good dram. The original 1935 edition is keenly sought-after by the
many collectors of books on whisky.
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