GUNN, Neil M(iller)

(1891-1973)

   Scottish writer and civil servant, author of many novels, the first being Grey Coast (1926). It and some others - like Morning Tide (1931), The Last Glen (1932), Second Sight (1940) and The Silver Bough(1948) - contain fantasy elements of interest. The Green Isle of the Great Deep (1944), a sequel to Young Art and Old Hector (1942), describes the experiences of an old man and a young boy in an underground realm which turns out to be a sterile and totalitarian land of the dead: their protests to God are successful. The Well at World's End (1951), whose title acknowledges a debt to William MORRIS, sums up NMG's style, which is rich and sometimes sentimental, and his abiding concern, which is the evocation of an idealized Scotland.

   JC