The Looker On

Journalist, novelist and poet Neil Munro was born in the beautiful town of Inveraray, Argyllshire in 1863. He was educated in the Parish School and 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" which was to become his new home. 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 literary work, and it is during this period that 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". This volume contains Blake's selection of Munro's sensitive, polished and witty journalism from these columns - a mere sixteenth of his total output. 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 a series of perceptive articles called "Random Reminiscences" which he contributed to the Daily Record and Mail under the pseudonym of 'Mr Incognito'. Neil Munro died in Helensburgh in 1930 and is buried in his beloved Inveraray in the ancient cemetery of Kilmalieu.