Neil Munro (writer)

Pastel sketch of Munro by William Strang in 1903.

Neil Munro (1863–1930) was a Scottish journalist, newspaper editor, author and literary critic. He was born in Inveraray and worked as a journalist on various newspapers.

He was basically a serious writer, but is now mainly known for his humorous short stories, originally written under the pen name of Hugh Foulis. (It seems that he was not making a serious attempt to disguise his identity, but wanted to keep his serious and humorous writings separate.) The best known were about the fictional Clyde puffer the Vital Spark and her captain Para Handy.^[1], but they also included stories about the waiter and kirk beadle Erchie MacPherson, and the travelling drapery salesman Jimmy Swan.

Man of letters

A key figure in literary circles, Munro was a friend of the writers J. M. Barrie, John Buchan, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham and Joseph Conrad, and the artists Edward A. Hornel, George Houston, Pittendrigh MacGillivray and Robert Macaulay Stevenson. He was an early promoter of the works of both Conrad and Rudyard Kipling.

Munro published several novels under his own name, most but not all historical novels with a Highland setting. These include John Splendid, set around the time of Montrose's campaign in the First Civil War, and Doom Castle. The best is generally considered to be The New Road (1914), set in 1733. The title refers to the road built by General Wade through the central Highlands from Stirling to Inverness, symolic of changes taking place to the Highlands at that time. The central character is Aeneas Macmaster, a young man who travels north to investigate his fathers's disappearance and presumed death 14 years earlier at the Battle of Glenshiel. The BBC produced a five-part TV serial version in 1973, scripted by Cliff Hanley, with John Grieve as Sandy Duncanson, the villain of the story.^[2] Both John Splendid and The New Road were revisionist views of the period, which attempted to debunk the cult of Highlanders and Jacobites, and were sympathetic to Clan Campbell, often seen as the villains of the period. (Munro came from Inverary, the Campbell's capital.)

His obituaries commonly claimed him to be the successor of Robert Louis Stevenson, and at his memorial service at Glasgow Cathedral, the noted critic Lauchlan MacLean Watt described Munro as "the greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott". However, after his death his serious novels faded from view (with the partial exception of The New Road) and he became mainly remembered as the creator of Para Handy. This process of revising the importance of Munro's work was accelerated by Hugh MacDiarmid becoming a detractor of Munro's style. There was a minor revival of interest in him around the turn of the 21st century, including e.g. the publication of annotated versions of the Para Handy stories with some stories not previously published in book form.

References

1. ^ Lendrum, Leslie (2004). Neil Munro: The Biography. Colonsay: House of Lochar. ISBN 1899863915. 
2. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497249/

External links

• The Official Site of the Neil Munro Society - Author of Para Handy
• BBC - Writing Scotland - Tartan Myths - Neil Munro
• Works by Neil Munro at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• article on him and his historical fiction
• review of The New Road

Persondata
Name	Munro, Neil
Alternative names
Short description	Journalist, author, critic
Date of birth	1863-00-00
Place of birth
Date of death	1930-00-00
Place of death