Neil Gunn Church and Graveyard,Caithness, Scotland, UK. cover photo - 32109622

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Neil Gunn Church and Graveyard, on the A9 go North, Caithness, Scotland, UK .It was the birthplace of Neil M. Gunn (1891â€“1973), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River etc., many of whose novels are set in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has a very rich archaeological landscape, the site of numerous Iron Age brochs and an early medieval monastic site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty. In boyhood, we get to know every square yard of it. We encompass it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and an occasionally visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and disappearing rabbit scuts, a wealth of wildflower and small birdlife, the soaring hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the folk who once lived far inland in straths and hollows, the past and the present held in a moment of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village school Prince George, Duke of Kent, was killed when his Short Sunderland flying boat crashed on a Dunbeath hillside on 25 August 1942.