The Brave Days

"Master of the most enviable journalistic style: crisp, colourful and yet gracious" Neil Munro was born in the beautiful town of Inveraray, Argyllshire in 1863. Educated in the Parish School he became a clerk to the local lawyer but, like so many young Highlanders, to fulfil his true ambitions he had to emigrate to the Lowlands. On 1st June, 1881 he arrived by steamer in "Glasgow of the steeples". In 1884 he obtained his first newspaper job as a reporter with The Greenock Advertiser. After a number of other newspaper posts he became chief reporter with the Glasgow Evening News in February 1888, the paper with which he was to remain happily for the rest of his working life. In 1897 he "went part time", reducing his commitment to journalism to two columns per week in order to concentrate on prose fiction. During this period he wrote eight novels, of which John Splendid, Gilian the Dreamer and The New Road are particularly fine. Of the two columns mentioned above, one he called The Looker-On which ranged widely over many topics, urban and rural, and was the original place of publication of the famous Para Handy stories.
The other column, devoted to book reviewing, he called Views and Reviews. It was, according to George Blake, "the most enlightened thing of its kind outside the serious reviews". With the outbreak of the First World War Munro returned to full time journalism, becoming editor of the Glasgow Evening News in 1918. He retired in 1927. During his last three years he reviewed the events and personalities of his lifetime in series of perceptive articles called Random Reminiscences which he contributed to the Daily Record and Mail under the pseudonym of 'Mr Incognito'. This volume contains George Blake's selection of these pieces. Neil Munro died in Helensburgh in 1930 and is buried in his beloved Inveraray in the ancient cemetery of Kilmalieu.