Neil Munro was a Scottish journalist, newspaper editor, author and literary critic. He was born in Inveraray

Inveraray

Inveraray is a royal burgh in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It is on the western shore of Loch Fyne, near its head, and on the A83 road. It is the traditional county town of Argyll and ancestral home to the Duke of Argyll.-Coat of arms:...

 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

Clyde puffer

The Clyde puffer is essentially a type of small steamboat which provided a vital supply link around the west coast and Hebrides islands of Scotland, stumpy little cargo ships that have achieved almost mythical status thanks largely to the short stories Neil Munro wrote about the Vital Spark and her...

 the Vital Spark

Vital Spark

The Vital Spark is a fictional Clyde puffer, created by Scottish writer Neil Munro. As its captain, the redoubtable Para Handy, often says: "the smertest boat in the coastin' tred"....

and her captain Para Handy

Para Handy

Para Handy, the anglicized Gaelic nickname of the fictional character Peter Macfarlane, is a character created by the journalist and writer Neil Munro in a series of stories published in the Glasgow Evening News under the pen name of Hugh Foulis....

., 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

J. M. Barrie

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...

, John Buchan, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham and Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

, and the artists Edward A. Hornel, George Houston

George Houston (artist)

George Houston RSA, RI, RSW was a Scottish artist. He was a prolific landscape painter, using both oil and watercolour. He primarily depicted scenes of Argyll and Ayrshire....

, Pittendrigh MacGillivray and Robert Macaulay Stevenson

Robert Macaulay Stevenson

Robert Macaulay Stevenson was a Scottish painter associated, like EA Hornel, with the later history of the Glasgow Boys....

. He was an early promoter of the works of both Conrad and Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

.

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

First Civil War

First Civil War may refer to:* the First English Civil War * the first civil war in the French Wars of Religion* the First Sudanese Civil War * the first Liberian 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

George Wade

Field Marshal George Wade served as a British military commander and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces.-Early career:Wade, born in Kilavally, Westmeath in Ireland, was commissioned into the Earl of Bath's Regiment in 1690 and served in Flanders in 1692, during the Nine Years War, earning a...

 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

Cliff Hanley

Clifford Leonard Clark Hanley was a journalist, novelist, playwright and broadcaster from Glasgow in Scotland...

, with John Grieve

John Grieve (actor)

John Grieve was a Scottish actor, best known as the engineer Macphail in the 1970s BBC adaptation of Neil Munro's Para Handy stories, The Vital Spark....

 as Sandy Duncanson, the villain of the story. 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

Clan Campbell

Clan Campbell is a Highland Scottish clan. Historically one of the largest, most powerful and most successful of the Highland clans, their lands were in Argyll and the chief of the clan became the Earl and later Duke of Argyll.-Origins:...

, 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

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

, and at his memorial service at Glasgow Cathedral

Glasgow Cathedral

The church commonly known as Glasgow Cathedral is the Church of Scotland High Kirk of Glasgow otherwise known as St. Mungo's Cathedral.The other cathedrals in Glasgow are:* The Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew...

, the noted critic Lauchlan MacLean Watt

Lauchlan MacLean Watt

Lauchlan MacLean Watt was the minister of Glasgow Cathedral from 1923-44, and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1933. He was a published poet and author, and respected as a literary critic....

 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

Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

 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.

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
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
  (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• article on him and his historical fiction
• review of The New Road