Neil M Gunn

(born November 1891 – died January 1973) – Dunbeath, Caithness

Neil M Gunn

Neil Miller Gunn was a novelist, critic and dramatist working at the height of the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike his contemporaries Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Hugh MacDiarmid, Gunn choose to write largely in English. His first novel, The Grey Coast, was published in 1926, but it wasn’t until 1937 and the success of Highland River that he was able to give up his job with Customs and Excise and write full-time. His socialist and Scottish Nationalist politics shaped his work, but equally did the landscape and people of the Northern Highlands in which he lived.

  • Cover scan of Blood Hunt
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    Blood Hunt - Paperback
    After a lifetime at sea, old Sandy returns to the land of his fathers to live in the peaceful isolation of a Highland croft. He befriends the local village boys, and when one of them seeks his help after killing a man, Sandy takes his side, warding off suspicious enquiries from the village policeman, the dead man's brother.
  • Cover scan of Butcher's Broom
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    Butcher's Broom - Paperback
    Butcher's Broom with the poignant background of the early nineteenth-century Highland clearances is one of the jewels in Gunn's crown. It is to be cross-promoted with other Neil Gunn titles in the series: Morning Tide, Young Art and Old Hector.
  • Cover scan of The Lost Chart
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    The Lost Chart - Paperback
  • Cover scan of The Lost Glen
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    The Lost Glen - Paperback
    'The Lost Glen' vividly portrays a clash of cultures & personalities against a background of a landscape in visible decay. The cultural collision & its effects are explored through Ewan, a young local man recently returned from university in disgrace, & a retired English colonel staying at the village hotel.
  • Cover scan of Morning Tide
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    Morning Tide - Paperback
    Twelve years old Hugh MacBeth lives in a small fishing village in Caithness at the end of the 19th century. This poignant novel follows his coming of age & is set against the decline of the fishing industry, a decline that seems to have doomed the village.
  • Cover scan of Second Sight
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    Second Sight - Paperback
    A novel set in a Highland shooting lodge featuring a party of wealthy English people, a team of Highland stalkers, a legendary stag to be hunted and a background of glen and corrie, shrouded from time to time by an impenetrable mist.
  • Cover scan of The Shadow
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    The Shadow - Paperback
    Horrific experiences of the Blitz in wartime London and the spiritual bankruptcy of her lover and his Marxist acquaintances are seen through the eyes of Nan, a young Scotswoman, who has returned to her native Highlands to recover from a nervous breakdown.
  • Cover scan of The Silver Darlings
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    The Silver Darlings - Paperback
    The tale of lives won from a cruel sea and crueller landlords. The dawning of the Herring Fisheries brought with it the hope of escape from the Highland Clearances, and this story paints a vivid picture of a community fighting against nature and history, and refusing to be crushed.
  • Cover scan of The Well At The World's End
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    The Well At The World's End - Paperback
    Peter is a man searching for his lost youth and, during the course of the novel, he finds if not youth itself then spiritual rejuvenation. Searching for the well at the world's end, he meets Highlanders who teach him about life and about himself.
  • Cover scan of Whisky And Scotland
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    Whisky And Scotland: A Practical And Spiritual Survey - Paperback
    This witty and indignant celebration of Scotland's national drink, written by the author of such novels as Morning Tide, The Grey Coast and The Well at the World's End, remains a classic on the traditional art of whisky distilling.
  • Cover scan of Wild Geese Overhead
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    Wild Geese Overhead - Paperback
    Set in Glasgow in 1939. The main character, a journalist, finds that a glimpse of wild geese catalyses the development of his thinking on various levels - social, political and psychological.
  • Cover scan of Young Art And Old Hector
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    Young Art And Old Hector - Paperback
    When family life becomes too much for Art, it is to Old Hector that he turns for comfort. Through Old Hector's tales and his own experiences, Young Art gradually learns about the business of growing up.

Bibliography

Biographies of Neil M Gunn

  • Cover scan of Neil Gunn

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    Neil Gunn - Hardback - J. B. Pick
    Neil Gunn is now generally accepted as the most significant novelist the Highlands of Scotland has produced. This study examines the scope and depth of his work and assesses him as a writer of European stature.
Last modified Thursday 12 February 2009
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