Neil M. Gunn was a Scottish novelist, critic and dramatist. Born in the northernmost county of mainland Scotland in 1891, he began his career as a customs and excise officer and spent sixteen years working at the Glen Mhor Whisky Distillery. He wrote prolifically throughout his life, authoring over twenty novels, essays and works of non-fiction. In 1937 he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Highland River. Gunn is regarded as one of the most important Scottish authors of the early twentieth century and a leading light of the 'Scottish Renaissance' of the 1920s and 30s. He died in 1973.
