Old Photograph Circus Elephant Towing Caravan Inverary Scotland

Old photograph of a Circus Elephant towing a Caravan in Inveraray, Scotland. Neil Munro was born on 3 June 1863 in Inveraray, the illegitimate son of Ann Munro, a kitchen maid. His death certificate gives his father's name as James Thompson Munro. He was brought up by his maternal grandparents and an aunt. He attended Glencaddie Primary School and Church Square Public School, leaving at 14. For five years he worked in the office of the Sheriff Clerk of Argyll, a fairly prestigious post that has led to speculation that he may have had undisclosed family connections. He then moved to Glasgow and worked briefly in the cashier's office in an ironmonger's shop in the Trongate before working as a journalist on the Greenock Advertiser, the Glasgow News, the Falkirk Herald and the Glasgow Evening News. He semi-retired from journalism in 1902 to concentrate on other writing. His play Macpherson, deploying his popular comic character, Erchie MacPherson, was staged by the Glasgow Repertory Theatre in 1909, and was well received. In 1914 he returned to journalism, becoming editor of the Glasgow Evening News in 1918. Munro published several novels under his own name. Initially he had some success writing historical novels, most of them set in the Highlands and exploring the coming of change in the comparatively recent past. His best-known novels from this phase of his writing career are John Splendid, set around Montrose's campaign in the First Civil War and his attack on Inveraray, and Doom Castle, set around the Jacobite rising of 1745, which was dramatised by the BBC in 1980. Later he attempted to expand his range, with more mixed success, writing novels with contemporary settings, including The Daft Days. In 1914 he returned to a Highland historical setting with the last and best-known of his novels, The New Road, dramatised by the BBC in 1973. He then concentrated on journalism again, but his work was affected by his poor health and the death of his son Hugh in the First World War.[4] In October 1930 he received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh.[6] He died in Craigendoran, Helensburgh, on 22 December 1930 at age 67. /a>.



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