Ben Nevis is the highest Munro in Britain

A Munro is a mountain in Scotland with a height over 3,000 ft (914.4 m). They are named after Sir Hugh Munro, 4th Baronet (1856–1919), who produced the first list of such hills, known as Munros Tables, in 1891. A Munro top is a summit over 3,000 ft which is not regarded as a separate mountain. As of the 2009, revision of the tables, published by the Scottish Mountaineering Club, there are 283 Munros and 227 further subsidiary tops. The most well known Munro is Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles, with an altitude of 1,344 metres (4,409 ft).

The Munros of Scotland are known for presenting challenging conditions to hikers, particularly in winter when a number of fatalities are reported each year. Nevertheless, a popular practice amongst hillwalkers is "Munro Bagging", the aim being to climb all of the listed Munros. As of 2009, more than 4,000 have reported completing their round. The first continuous round of the Munros was completed by Hamish Brown in 1974, whilst the current holder of the record for the fastest continuous round is Stephen Pyke who completed his 2010 round in just under 40 days.

History[link]

Before 1891 and the publication of Munros Tables there was considerable uncertainty about the number of peaks in Scotland over 3,000 feet. Estimates ranged from as few as 31 in the guides written by M.J.B. Baddeley, up to 236 listed by Robert Hall in the third edition of The Highland Sportsman and Tourist, published in 1884. One of the aims of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, formed in 1889, was to rectify this situation and accurately document all of Scotland's mountains over 3,000 feet. Sir Hugh Munro, a founding member of the Club, took on the task using his own experience as a mountaineer, as well as detailed study of the Ordnance Survey Six-inch to the mile and One-inch to the mile map series.^[1][2]

Munro's research produced a set of tables which were published in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal in September 1891. They listed 538 summits over 3,000 feet, of which 283 were regarded as "separate mountains"; the term Munro applies to the latter, while the lesser summits are known as tops. Munro did not set any measure of topographic prominence by which a peak qualified as a separate mountain, and much debate has since taken place over how distinct two hills must be if they are to be considered as two separate Munros.

The Scottish Mountaineering Club have carried out a number of revisions of the tables, both in response to new height data on Ordnance Survey maps and to address the perceived inconsistency as to which peaks qualify for Munro status. In 1992, the publication of Alan Dawson's book Relative hills of Britain, showed that three tops not already considered summits, had a prominence of more than 500 feet (152 m).^{[citation needed]} Given this they would have qualified as Corbett summits had they been under 3,000 feet. In the 1997 tables these three tops, on Beinn Alligin, Beinn Eighe and Buachaille Etive Beag, gained full Munro summit status. Dawson's book also highlighted a number of significant tops with as much as 60 metres (197 ft) of prominence which were not listed as Munro subsidiary tops. The 1997 tables promoted five of these to full Munro status.^{[citation needed]}

Other classification schemes in Scotland, such as the Corbetts 2,500–3,000 ft (760–910 m) and Grahams 2,000–2,500 ft (610–760 m), require a peak to have a prominence of at least 500 feet for inclusion. The Munros however, still lack a rigid set of criteria for inclusion, with many summits of lesser prominence listed, principally due to time or distance factors rendering their summits difficult to reach. The 1997 tables ironed out many anomalies, but despite it being the highest-profile hill list in UK, in a number of people’s eyes, the list still is, and will probably remain, not wholly satisfactory.^{[citation needed]}

During May and July 2009 several mountains were re-surveyed by the Munro Society to determine a more accurate height reading for those mountains which are known to be close to the 3,000 ft figure. In a press release on 10 September 2009 it was announced that the mountain Sgùrr nan Ceannaichean, south of Glen Carron, has a height of 913.43 metres (2,996.8 ft).^[3] As a result of the re-surveys the Scottish Mountaineering Club removed the Munro status of Sgùrr nan Ceannaichean and this mountain is now a Corbett.^[4]

The current revision of the tables, published in 2009, lists 283 Munros and 227 further subsidiary tops.

Bagging the Munros[link]

Ben Hope is the most northerly Munro

The triple buttresses of Coire Mhic Fearchair on Beinn Eighe

Despite their relatively modest height compared with some continental ranges, walking and climbing in the Scottish mountains may be made treacherous by their latitude and exposure to Atlantic and Arctic weather systems. Even in summer, conditions can be atrocious; thick fog, strong winds, driving rain and freezing summit temperatures are not unusual.

Winter ascents of certain Munros are widely accepted to provide among the most challenging ice climbs in Europe. Some walkers are unprepared for the often extreme weather conditions on the exposed tops and many fatalities are recorded every year, often resulting from slips on wet rock or ice.

Some hillwalkers climb Munros with an eye to climbing every single one, a practice known as "Munro bagging". Having climbed all of them, a walker is entitled to be called a Munroist. Munro-bagging is a form of peak bagging.

Perhaps the most famous Munro is Ben Nevis in the Lochaber area. It is the highest peak in the British Isles, with an altitude of 1,344 metres (4,409 ft). Other well-known Munros include:

• Ben Lomond, the most southerly of the Munros
• Ben Hope in Sutherland is the most northerly Munro
• Ben Macdui and Cairn Gorm in the Cairngorms
• Buachaille Etive Mòr at the entrance to Glencoe, one of the most photographed Munros
• Beinn Eighe in Torridon
• Liathach in Torridon
• Lochnagar, a mountain near the Royal Castle of Balmoral in the area of Glen Muick
• Schiehallion, a mountain often described as lying at the centre of Scotland
• Sgùrr nan Gillean, Sgùrr Alasdair and the Inaccessible Pinnacle, in the Cuillin Hills on the Isle of Skye

Notable completions[link]

As of 2009, more than 4,000 people have completed the Munros.^[5] The SMC, who maintain a list of those Munroists who have reported completing the Munros, have attempted to popularise the archaic spelling of compleation.^[6]

Hugh Munro never completed his own list, missing out on Càrn an Fhidhleir and Càrn Cloich-mhuillin (downgraded to a "top" in 1981).^[7] Sir Hugh is said to have missed the Inaccessible Pinnacle of Sgùrr Dearg, on the Isle of Skye, which he never climbed.^[8] However the "In Pinn", as it is known colloquially within Scottish mountaineering, was only listed as a subsidiary top on his list (despite being several metres higher than Sgùrr Dearg, which was listed as the main top).^[9]

The first "compleationist" was to be the Reverend A. E. Robertson, in 1901, later minister at Braes of Rannoch from 1907.^[7] However, research has cast doubt on this claim, and it is not certain that he reached the summit of Ben Wyvis.^[10] Also it is known that Robertson did not climb the Inaccessible Peak of Sgùrr Dearg.^[11] If Robertson is discounted, the first Munroist is Ronald Burn, who completed in 1923. Burn is also (indisputably) the first person to climb all the subsidiary "tops".^[7]

The person with the most rounds of Munros is Steven Fallon from Edinburgh, who has completed 13 rounds as of 2006.^[12]

Chris Smith became the first Member of Parliament to complete the Munros when he reached the summit of Sgùrr nan Coireachan on 27 May 1989.^[13]

Ben Fleetwood is probably the youngest person to have completed a round. He climbed the final Munro of his round – Ben More – on 30 August 2011 at the age of 10 years and 3 months.^[14] The youngest compleationist to have done the round without the presence of a parent or a guardian is probably Andy Nisbet, who finished his round in 1972 aged 18 years and 1 month.^[14]

Continuous rounds[link]

Hamish Brown did the first continuous self-propelled round of the Munros (except for the Skye and Mull ferries) between 4 April and 24 July 1974 walking 1,639 mi (2,638 km), 150 mi (241 km) of which were on a bicycle, with 449,000 ft (137,000 m) of ascent. The walk is fully documented in his book Hamish's Mountain Walk,^[15] which is credited^{[by whom?]} with kick-starting the popularity of Munro-bagging as a hobby. The average time taken to bag all the Munros is eight years.^[12]

The first reported completion of all the Munros plus the subsidiary tops in one continuous expedition was by Chris Townsend in 1996. His trip lasted between May 18 and September 12 (118 days), he covered a distance of 1,770 miles (2,849 km) (240 miles / 386 kilometres by bicycle) with 575,000 ft (175,000 m) of ascent. The round was broken twice for spells at the office^[16], which could be regarded as stretching the meaning of "continuous".

The first person to complete a winter round (all the Munros in one winter season) was Martin Moran in 1984/85. His journey lasted between December 21, 1984 and March 13, 1985 (83 days), he walked 1,028 miles (1,654 km) with 412,000 ft (126,000 m) of ascent. He used motor transport (Campervan) to link his walk.^[17]

In the winter of 2005/06, Steve Perry completed a continuous unsupported round entirely on foot (and ferry).^{[citation needed]} He is also the first person to have completed two continuous Munro rounds, having also walked Land's End to John O'Groats via every mainland 3,000 ft mountain between 18 February 2003 and 30 September 2003.^[18]

Fastest round[link]

Charlie Campbell, a former postman from Glasgow, held the record for the fastest round of the Munros between 2000 and 2010.^{[citation needed]} He completed his round in 48 days 12 hours, finishing on 16 July 2000, on Ben Hope.^{[citation needed]} His record was broken by Stephen Pyke of Stone, Staffordshire, in 2010 who completed the round in 39 days, 9 hours. Pyke's round started on the island of Mull on 25 April 2010 and finished on Ben Hope in Sutherland on 3 June 2010. He cycled and kayaked between Munros; no motorised transport was used. He was backed by a support team in a motor home, but had to camp out in the more remote areas.^[19]

On 18th September 2011 Alex Robinson and Tom O'Connell finished their self-propelled continuous round on Ben Hope in a time of 48 days 6 hours and 56 minutes setting the second fastest time ever. At the age of just 21, Alex also became the youngest person to have completed a continuous round without the use of any motorised transport.

See also[link]

The SMC recognises six peaks in England, fifteen in Wales and thirteen in Ireland that would be Munros or Munro Tops if they were in Scotland. These are referred to as Furth Munros, i.e. the Munros furth of Scotland.^[20] The first recorded Further is James Alexander Parker, who completed on Tryfan (Snowdonia) on 19 April 1929.^[21]

• Bill Smith (fell runner)
• List of Munros
• Hill lists in the British Isles
• Mountains and hills of Scotland

References[link]

Notations[link]

• The Munros (SMC Guide), Donald Bennet et al., ISBN 0-907521-13-4

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

• Scottish Mountaineering Club official Munros page, including completionists.
• Track your Munro progress and keep your friends up to date.
• MunroMagic – details and route descriptions for all Munros. (Some content requires registration.)
• Walk Highlands guide to the Munros - includes free OS maps and GPS routes for each Munro, and detailed descriptions.
• The Munros and Tops 1891-1997 - Spreadsheet showing changes in successive editions of Munros Tables.
• ScottishHills.com - Hillwalking forum with Munro, Corbett, Graham and Donalds log, maps and trip reports.

v t e Mountains and hills of Great Britain and Ireland List of mountains and hills of the United Kingdom Corbetts · Donalds · Fells · Grahams · Hewitts · Marilyns · Munros · Murdos · Nuttalls · Wainwrights Scotland Mountains and hills of Scotland · Munros · Grahams/Corbetts/Marilyns · Donalds · County tops: 1974 · current England Hewitts and Nuttalls · Wainwrights · Marilyns · County tops: 1964 · current Wales Hewitts and Nuttalls · Marilyns · County tops: 1964 · current Northern Ireland Hewitts · Marilyns Republic of Ireland List of mountains in Ireland · Hewitts · Marilyns List of mountains and hills by height · List of mountains and hills by relative height

Alice Ann Munro (née Laidlaw; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize.^[2] Generally regarded as one of the world's foremost writers of fiction, Munro writes about the human condition and relationships seen through the lens of daily life. While the locus of Munro’s fiction is her native Southwestern Ontario,^[3] her reputation as a short-story writer is international. Her "accessible, moving stories" explore human complexities in a seemingly effortless style.^[4] Munro's writing has established her as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction," or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov."^[5]

Life and career[link]

Munro was born in the town of Wingham, Ontario, into a family of fox and poultry farmers. Her father was Robert Eric Laidlaw and her mother, a schoolteacher, was Anne Clarke Laidlaw (née Chamney). She began writing as a teenager and published her first story, "The Dimensions of a Shadow," in 1950 while a student at the University of Western Ontario. During this period she worked as a waitress, a tobacco picker and a library clerk. In 1951, she left the university, where she had been majoring in English since 1949, to marry James Munro and move to Vancouver, British Columbia. Her daughters Sheila, Catherine, and Jenny were born in 1953, 1955, and 1957 respectively; Catherine died 15 hours after birth. In 1963, the Munros moved to Victoria where they opened Munro's Books, a popular bookstore still in business. In 1966, their daughter Andrea was born. Alice and James Munro were divorced in 1972. She returned to Ontario to become Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario. In 1976 she married Gerald Fremlin, a geographer. The couple moved to a farm outside Clinton, Ontario. They have since moved from the farm to a house in the town of Clinton.

Alice Munro's first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), was highly acclaimed and won that year’s Governor General's Award, Canada’s highest literary prize. That success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories published as a novel. In 1978, Munro's collection of interlinked stories Who Do You Think You Are? was published (titled The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose in the United States). This book earned Munro the Governor General’s Literary Award for a second time. From 1979 to 1982, she toured Australia, China and Scandinavia. In 1980 Munro held the position of Writer-in-Residence at both the University of British Columbia and the University of Queensland. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Munro published a short-story collection about once every four years to increasing acclaim, winning both national and international awards. In 2002, her daughter Sheila Munro published a childhood memoir, Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up With Alice Munro.

Alice Munro's stories frequently appear in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Mademoiselle, and The Paris Review. In interviews to promote her 2006 collection The View from Castle Rock, Munro suggested that she might not publish any further collections. She has since recanted and published further work. Her latest collection, Too Much Happiness, was published in August 2009.^[6] Her story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" was adapted for the screen and directed by Sarah Polley as the film Away from Her, starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent. It debuted at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Polley's adaptation was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but lost to No Country for Old Men.

At a Toronto appearance in October 2009, Munro indicated that she received treatment for cancer and a heart condition, the latter requiring bypass surgery. At that time, she indicated that her next work would involve a theme of sexual ambivalence.^[7]

Writing style[link]

Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario. Her strong regional focus is one of the features of her fiction. Another is the omniscient narrator who serves to make sense of the world. Many compare Munro's small-town settings to writers of the U.S. rural South. As in the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions. However, the reaction of Munro's characters is less intense than their Southern counterparts'. Thus, particularly with respect to her male characters, she may be said to capture the essence of every man. Her female characters, though, are more complex. Much of Munro's work exemplifies the literary genre known as Southern Ontario Gothic.^[8]

Munro's work is often compared with the great short story writers. For example, the American writer Cynthia Ozick called Munro "our Chekhov." In Munro stories, as in Chekhov's, plot is secondary and "little happens." As with Chekhov, Garan Holcombe notes: "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail." Munro's work deals with "love and work, and the failings of both. She shares Chekhov’s obsession with time and our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward."^[9]

A frequent theme of her work—particularly evident in her early stories—has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. It is a mark of her style for characters to experience a revelation that sheds light on, and gives meaning to, an event.

Munro's spare and lucid language and command of detail gives her fiction a "remarkable precision," as Helen Hoy observes. Munro's prose reveals the ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time," "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry," "special, useless knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it." Her style places the fantastic next to the ordinary with each undercutting the other in ways that simply, and effortlessly, evoke life.^[10] As Robert Thacker notes: "Munro's writing creates ... an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude—not of mimesis, so-called and... 'realism'—but rather the feeling of being itself... of just being a human being."^[11] Many critics have asserted that Munro's stories often have the emotional and literary depth of novels. The question of whether Munro actually writes short-stories or novels has often been asked. Alex Keegan, writing in Eclectica, has a simple answer: "Who cares? In most Munro stories there is as much as in many novels."^[12]

Books[link]

• Dance of the Happy Shades – 1968 (winner of the 1968 Governor General's Award for Fiction)
• Lives of Girls and Women – 1971
• Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You – 1974
• Who Do You Think You Are? – 1978 (winner of the 1978 Governor General's Award for Fiction; also published as The Beggar Maid)
• The Moons of Jupiter – 1982 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
• The Progress of Love – 1986 (winner of the 1986 Governor General's Award for Fiction)
• Friend of My Youth – 1990 (winner of the Trillium Book Award)
• Open Secrets – 1994 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
• Selected Stories – 1996
• The Love of a Good Woman – 1998 (winner of the 1998 Giller Prize)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - 2001 (recently republished as "Away From Her")
• No Love Lost – 2003
• Vintage Munro – 2004
• Runaway – 2004 (winner of the 2004 Giller Prize) ISBN 1-4000-4281-X
• Carried Away: A Selection of Stories – 2006
• The View from Castle Rock – 2006
• Too Much Happiness – 2009

Selected awards and honours[link]

Awards[link]

• Governor General's Award for English-language fiction (Canada) - 1968, 1978, 1986
• Canadian Booksellers Award for Lives Of Girls And Women (1971)
• Shortlisted for the annual (UK) Booker Prize for Fiction (now the Man Booker Prize) (1980) for The Beggar Maid
• Marian Engel Award (1986)
• Trillium Book Award (1990)
• WH Smith Literary Award (1995, UK) for Open Secrets
• PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction (1997)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (1998, U.S.) For The Love of a Good Woman
• Giller Prize (1998 and 2004)
• Rea Award for the Short Story (2001) given to a living American or Canadian author.
• Libris Award
• O. Henry Award for continuing achievement in short fiction in the U.S. for "Passion" (2006) and "What Do You Want To Know For" (2008)
• Man Booker International Prize (2009, UK)^[13]
• Canada-Australia Literary Prize
• Commonwealth Writers Prize Regional Award for Canada and the Caribbean.

Honors[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alice Munro

• 1992 Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1993 Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal
• 2005 Medal of Honor for Literature from the U.S. National Arts Club ^[14]
• 2010 Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters ^[15]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Books[link]

• Besner, Neil Kalman. Introducing Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women: a reader's guide. Toronto: ECW Press, 1990.
• Blodgett, E. D. Alice Munro. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.
• Carrington, Ildikó de Papp. Controlling the Uncontrollable: the fiction of Alice Munro. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989.
• Carscallen, James. The Other Country: patterns in the writing of Alice Munro. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993.
• Cox, Alisa. Alice Munro. Tavistock: Northcote House, 2004.
• Hallvard, Dahlie. Alice Munro and Her Works. Toronto: ECW Press, 1984.
• Hebel, Ajay. The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro's discourse of absence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
• Hooper, Brad The Fiction of Alice Munro: An Appreciation Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2008, ISBN 978-0-275-99121-0
• Howells, Coral Ann. Alice Munro. New York: Manchester University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-7190-4558-5
• MacKendrick, Louis King. Some Other Reality: Alice Munro's Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993.
• Martin, W.R. Alice Munro: paradox and parallel. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1987.
• McCaig, JoAnn. Reading In: Alice Munro's archives. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002.
• Miller, Judith, ed. The Art of Alice Munro: saying the unsayable: papers from the Waterloo conference. Waterloo: Waterloo Press, 1984.
• Munro, Sheila. Lives of Mother and Daughters: growing up with Alice Munro. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001.
• Pfaus, B. Alice Munro. Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 1984.
• Rasporich, Beverly Jean. Dance of the Sexes: art and gender in the fiction of Alice Munro. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990.
• Redekop, Magdalene. Mothers and Other Clowns: the stories of Alice Munro. New York: Routledge, 1992.
• Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. Alice Munro: a double life. Toronto: ECW Press, 1992.
• Smythe, Karen E. Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro and the poetics of elegy. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.
• Steele, Apollonia and Tener, Jean F., editors. The Alice Munro Papers: Second Accession. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1987.
• Thacker, Robert. Alice Munro: writing her lives: a biography. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005.
• Thacker, Robert. Ed. The Rest of the Story: critical essays on Alice Munro. Toronto: ECW Press, 1999.

Periodicals[link]

• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "The Tremendous Importance of Ordinary Events: An interview with Alice Munro about two versions of 'Wood.'" [1] New Haven Review, Issue 009 (Winter 2011): 46-67. Munro discusses her first version of “Wood,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 1980; and her second version, which appears in her collection Too Much Happiness and is reprinted in this NHR issue alongside this interview; and she speaks about the craft of writing.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "Appreciations of Alice Munro." Virginia Quarterly Review 82.3 (Summer 2006): 91-107. Interviews with various authors (Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, Charles McGrath, Daniel Menaker and others) presented in first-person essay format. Munro's story "Home," which appears in her collection The View from Castle Rock, is printed in this VQR issue alongside this interview.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "An Interview with Alice Munro." Virginia Quarterly Review (22 October 2010). Interview with Alice Munro about Too Much Happiness and the craft of writing.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness." Virginia Quarterly Review (22 October 2010). Long-form book review of Too Much Happiness in the context of Alice Munro's canon.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "An Interview with Alice Munro."Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 2006). Interview with Alice Munro about The View from Castle Rock and the craft of writing.
• Beran, Carol. "The Pursuit of Happiness: A Study of Alice Munro's Fiction." Social Science Journal. 2000. 37.3 (2000): 329.
• Buitenhuis, Peter. "The Wilds of the Past." Books in Canada 19.4 (May 1990): 19.
• Canitz, Christa. and Seamon, Roger. "The Rhetoric of Fictional Realism in the Stories of Alice Munro." Canadian Literature. 150 (Autumn 1996): 67.
• Clark, Miriam Marty. "Allegories of Reading in Alice Munro's 'Carried Away.'" Contemporary Literature. 37.1 (Spring 1996):49.
• Creighton, David. "In Search of Alice Munro." Books in Canada 23.4 (May 1994): 19.
• Crouse, David. "Resisting Reduction." Canadian Literature. 146 (Autumn 1995):51.
• de Papp Carrington, Ildiko. "Definitions of a Fool: Alice Munro's 'Walking on Water.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 28.2 (Spring 1991):135.
• de Papp Carrington, Ildiko."'Don't Tell (on) Daddy': Narrative Complexity in Alice Munro's 'the Love of a Good Woman.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 33.2 (Spring 1997): 159.
• de Papp Carrington, Ildiko. "Talking Dirty: Alice Munro's 'Open Secrets' and John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 31.4 (Fall 1994): 595.
• de Papp Carrington, Ildiko."What's in a Title?: Alice Munro's 'Carried Away.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 20.4 (Fall 1993): 555.
• Elliott, Gayle. "A Different Track: Feminist meta-narrative in Alice Munro's 'Friend of My Youth.'" Journal of Modern Literature. 20.1 (Summer 1996): 75.
• Fowler, Rowena. "The Art of Alice Munro: The Beggar Maid and Lives of Girls and Women." Critique. 25.4 (Summer 1984): 189.
• Garson, Marjorie. "Alice Munro and Charlotte Bronte." University of Toronto Quarterly. 69.4 (Fall 2000): 783.
• Genoways, Ted. "Ordinary Outsiders." Virginia Quarterly Review 82.3 (Summer 2006): 80-81.
• Gittings, Christopher E.. "Constructing a Scots-Canadian Ground: Family history and cultural translation in Alice Munro." Studies in Short Fiction 34.1 (Winter 1997): 27
• Hiscock, Andrew. "Longing for a Human Climate: Alice Munro's 'Friend of My Youth' and the culture of loss." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 32.2 (1997): 18.
• Houston, Pam. "A Hopeful Sign: The making of metonymic meaning in Munro's 'Meneseteung.'" Kenyon Review 14.4 (Fall 1992): 79.
• Hoy, H. "'Dull, Simple, Amazing and Unfathomable': Paradox and Double Vision In Alice Munro's Fiction." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne (SCL/ÉLC), Volume 5.1. (1980).
• Lynch, Gerald. "No Honey, I'm Home." Canadian Literature 160 (Spring 1999): 73.
• Levene, Mark. "It Was About Vanishing: A Glimpse of Alice Munro's Stories." University of Toronto Quarterly 68.4 (Fall 1999): 841.
• Marchand, Philip. "Open Book: Philip Marchand on Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro." The National Post, 29 August 2009: E1.
• Martin, W.R., and Ober, Warren. "The Comic Spirit in Alice Munro's Open Secrets: 'A Real Life' and 'The Jack Randa Hotel.'" Studies in Short Fiction 35.1 (Winter 1998): 41.
• Mayberry, Katherine J. "Every Last Thing…Everlasting: Alice Munro and the limits of narrative." Studies in Short Fiction 29.4 (Fall 1992): 531.
• McCombs, Judith. "Searching Bluebeard's Chambers: Grimm, Gothic, and Bible Mysteries in Alice Munro's 'The Love of a Good Woman.'" American Review of Canadian Studies 30.3 (Autumn 2000): 327.
• McGill, Robert. "Somewhere I've Been Meaning to Tell You: Alice Munro's Fiction of Distance." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 37.1 (2002): 9.
• McGill, Robert, "Where Do You Think You Are? Alice Munro's Open Houses." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. 35.4 (December 2002): 103.
• Morgenstern, Naomi. "The Baby or the Violin? Ethics and Femininity in the Fiction of Alice Munro." Literature Interpretation Theory 14.2 (April–June 2003): 69.
• Nunes, Mark. "Postmodern 'Piercing': Alice Munro's contingent ontologies." Studies in Short Fiction 34.1 (Winter, 1998): 11.
• Pruitt, Virginia. "Gender Relations: Alice Munro's 'Differently' and 'Carried Away'." Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 64.4 (Fall 2000): 494.
• Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. "Alice Munro: A Double Life." Books in Canada 21.3 (April 1992): 16.
• Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. "Too Many Things: Reading Alice Munro's 'The Love of a Good Woman.'" University of Toronto Quarterly 71.3 (Summer 2002): 786.
• Rule, Jane. "A Tribute to Literary Mothers." Herizons 19.4 (Spring 2006): 26-27.
• Simpson, Mona. "A Quiet Genius." Atlantic Monthly 288.5 (Dec 2001): 126.
• Smythe, Karen. "The Ethics of Epiphany in Munrovian Elegy." University of Toronto Quarterly 60.4 (Summer 1991): 493.
• Solotaroff, Ted. "Life Stories." Nation 259.18 (28 November 1994): 665-668.
• Somacarrera, Pilar. "Speech Presentation and 'Coloured' Narrative in Alice Munro's Who Do You Think You Are?" Textual Studies in Canada 10/11 (Winter 1988): 69.
• Timson, J.. "Merciful Light." Maclean's 103.19 (7 May 1990): 66.
• Thacker, R. Review of Some other reality: Alice Munro's Something I've been Meaning to Tell You, by Louis K. MacKendrick. Journal of Canadian Studies, (Summer 1998).
• Turbide, Diane. "The Incomparable Storyteller." Maclean's 107.42 (17 October 1994): 46.
• Walbert, Kate. "Munro Doctrine." Nation 250.19 (14 May 1990): 678.
• Weinhouse, Linda. "Alice Munro: Hard-luck stories or there is no sexual relation." Critique 36.2 (Winter 1995): 121.

External links[link]

• Works by or about Alice Munro in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• British Council Biography of Munro. Retrieved 2010-09-22
• Munro, Alice (132 Summer 1994). The Art of Fiction No. 137. Interview with Jeanne McCulloch. Mona Simpson. The Paris Review. http://www.parisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/1791. Retrieved Retrieved 2010-09-22. 
• Blodgett, E.D.. "Munro, Alice". The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005522. Retrieved Retrieved 2010-09-22. 
• A Biocritical Essay of Munro's early work by Thomas E. Tausky (1986) The University of Calgary Library Special Collections.Retrieved 2010-09-22
• A Quiet Genius Review by Mona Simpson (2001) The Atlantic Online. Retrieved 2010-09-22
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "The Tremendous Importance of Ordinary Events: An interview with Alice Munro about two versions of 'Wood.'" [2] New Haven Review, Issue 009 (Winter 2011): 46-67. Munro discusses her first version of "Wood," which appeared in The New Yorker in 1980, and her second version, which appears in her collection Too Much Happiness and is reprinted in this NHR issue alongside this interview; and she speaks about the craft of writing.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "Appreciations of Alice Munro." Virginia Quarterly Review 82.3 (Summer 2006): 91-107. Interviews with various authors (Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, Charles McGrath, Daniel Menaker and others) presented in first-person essay format. Munro's story "Home," which appears in her collection The View from Castle Rock, is printed in this VQR issue alongside this interview.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "An Interview with Alice Munro." Virginia Quarterly Review (22 October 2010). Interview with Alice Munro about Too Much Happiness and the craft of writing.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness." Virginia Quarterly Review (22 October 2010). Long-form book review of Too Much Happiness in the context of Alice Munro's canon.
• Awano, Lisa Dickler. "An Interview with Alice Munro."Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 2006). Interview with Alice Munro about The View from Castle Rock and the craft of writing.
• An excerpt from Douglas Gibson's book, "Stories About Storytellers," on his experience with Alice Munro.
• "Literarily Speaking with Alice Munro". TV Ontario. 5 April (year unknown). http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?b?8551641144281600000. Retrieved Retrieved 2010-09-22. 

Rex Murphy (born March 1947) is a Canadian commentator and author, primarily on Canadian political and social matters.

Murphy was born in Carbonear, Newfoundland, 105 kilometres west of St. John's and is the second of five children of Harry and Marie Murphy. He graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1968, and promptly went to the United Kingdom to study at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He did not, however, receive an Oxford degree.

Early career[link]

Murphy first came to national attention while attending Memorial University during a nationally covered speech in Lennoxville, Quebec. Murphy characterized the Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood's governing style as dictatorial, and proclaimed the recent announcement from his legislature of free tuition as a sham. Smallwood warned the undergraduate student in a news conference not to return. Murphy did and was elected President of Memorial University Student Council. In the end the government caved in. All students received the free tuition promised, plus a $50 living allowance.

Murphy has run for office in three Newfoundland provincial elections, in 1975 as a Progressive Conservative, and in 1985 and 1987 as a Liberal. He lost all three times. He also worked in the 1980s as executive assistant to Clyde Wells.

Current work[link]

Murphy is a frequent presence on the various branches of the CBC. He has regular commentary segments entitled "Point of View" on The National, the CBC's flagship nightly news program. He is the regular host of CBC Radio One's Cross Country Checkup, a nationwide call-in show.

He also wrote a column for the Saturday edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper until January 2010 when the Globe cancelled the column and Murphy moved to Canada's National Post.^[1] Murphy's writing is characterized by a polysyllabic style and a wide range of cultural references.

He is a vocal critic of arguments for anthropogenic climate change and proposed policy responses for it, such as the Green Shift. On Thursday, September 29, 2011, Murphy hosted "Climate Change 101" at the University of Calgary. The event was sponsored by W. Brett Wilson, a Canadian entrepreneur and a former employee of Imperial Oil.^[2]

In 2004, he and nine other prominent Canadians participated in the production and the defence of a Great Canadian on the CBC Television program The Greatest Canadian. Murphy, advocating for former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, guided his candidate to third place in the final vote.

Honours[link]

In June 2008, Rex Murphy was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Waterloo.^[3] He previously was awarded honorary doctorates of letters by Memorial, St. Thomas, and Nipissing universities.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Rex Murphy

• Rex Murphy profile at cbc.ca
• The National – Point of View

Video[link]

• Rex Murphy's Video Bio

See also[link]

• List of newspaper columnists

References[link]

Gene Deitch
Born	(1924-08-08) August 8, 1924 (age 87) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Illustrator, animator, director
Years active	1945–2006
Spouse	Marie Deitch (?-1960) Zdenka Deitch (1960-present)
Children	Kim Deitch, Simon Deitch, Seth Deitch
Website
http://www.genedeitch.com/

Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch (born August 8, 1924)^[1] is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston Woods/Scholastic, adapting children's picture books. His studio is located in Prague near the Barrandov studios where many major films were recorded. In 2003, he was awarded the "Annie" by ASIFA Hollywood for a lifetime contribution to the art of animation.^[2]

Deitch married his wife Zdenka in 1960. His sons Kim Deitch and Simon Deitch are prominent artists in the underground comix and alternative comics movements. He currently resides with his wife in Prague, where he works as an independent animation scenarist/director. He wrote a memoir, For the Love of Prague, based on the experience of being "the only free American in Prague during 30 years of Communism."

Career[link]

From 1945 to 1951 Deitch was primary graphics contributor, and eventually art director, for The Record Changer, a jazz magazine. He was also an amateur recording engineer, who made tape recordings of artists like John Lee Hooker and Pete Seeger. He made recordings of Connie Converse in the mid-1950s, which led to her rediscovery forty years later.

Deitch has produced animated cartoons for studios such as UPA/Columbia Pictures, Terrytoons/20th Century Fox (Tom Terrific), MGM (Tom and Jerry), and Paramount Pictures (Nudnik. Popeye). He directed, with producer William L. Snyder, a series of made for TV shorts of Krazy Kat for King Features Television from 1962 to 1964. The Bluffers, which was based on one of Deitch's ideas, was also co-produced by him. He directed the 1966 film Alice of Wonderland in Paris.

[edit] Tom and Jerry

In 1960, Deitch and Rembrandt Films, after collaborating in a pool of producers that made the Popeye 1960's season for television by King Features, arranged a deal with MGM to revive the Tom and Jerry franchise overseas in Prague, Czechoslovakia.^[3][4][5][6] Deitch states that, being a member of the UPA, he has always had a personal dislike of Tom and Jerry, citing them as the "primary bad example of senseless violence - humor based on pain - attack and revenge - to say nothing of the tasteless use of a headless black woman stereotype house servant."^[7] Štěpán Koníček, a student of Karel Ančerl and conductor of the Film Symphony Orchestra, and Václav Lídl provided the musical score for the Deitch short, while Larz Bourne, Chris Jenkyns, and Eli Bauer wrote the cartoons. The majority of vocal effects and voices in Deitch's films were provided by Allen Swift.^[8]

Since the Deitch/Snyder team had seen only a handful of the original Tom and Jerry shorts, and since Deitch and Snyder produced their cartoons on a tighter budget of $10,000, the resulting films were considered unusual, and, in many ways, bizarre.^[4][7] The characters' gestures were often performed at high speed, frequently causing heavy motion blur. As a result, the animation of the characters looked choppy and sickly. The soundtracks featured sparse music, futuristic sound effects, dialogue that was mumbled rather than spoken, and heavy use of reverb. Fans that typically rooted for Tom criticized Deitch's cartoons for never having Tom become a threat to Jerry. Most of the time, Tom only attempts to hurt him when he gets in his way. Tom's new owner, a corpulent and grumpy middle-aged white man (with serious temper problems, often going red in the face similar to Deitch's earlier "Clint Clobber"^[9] character at Terrytoons), was also more graphically brutal in punishing Tom's mistakes as compared to Mammy Two-Shoes, such as beating and thrashing Tom repeatedly, searing his face with a grill and forcing Tom to drink an entire carbonated beverage.

However, all thirteen shorts were commercial successes; in 1961, the Tom and Jerry series became the highest-grossing film series of all-time, dethroning the Looney Tunes series which had held the position for sixteen years; this success was repeated once more in 1962.^[6] However, unlike the Hanna and Barbera shorts, none of Deitch's films were nominated nor did they win an Academy Award.^[6] The episodes created by Deitch have generally been less favorably received by the general audience and are often labeled as "very disappointing" compared to the rest of the series. In his review for Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection, Paul Kupperberg of Comicmix called the shorts "perfectly dreadful" and "too often released", as well as a result of "cheap labor".^[10]

Deitch has frequently defended his films; in an interview with the New York Times, when asked about working on the Tom and Jerry series, Deitch responded "All the experts say [my shorts are] the worst of the 'Tom and Jerry's, [...] I was a UPA man -- my whole background was much closer to the Czechs. 'Tom and Jerry' I always considered dreck, but they had great timing, facial expressions, double takes, squash and stretch," all of which the interviewer stated were "techniques the Czechs had to learn," negatively adding "The Czech style had nothing in common with these gag-driven cartoons."^[11]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Gene Deitch official site
• Gene Deitch at the Internet Movie Database
• Howdy Doody lost work
• "How to succeed in animation" - a long article by Gene Deitch
• Biography of Gene Deitch from the Cartoon Hall of Fame of ASIFA-Hollywood

Herbert James "Burt" Munro (Bert in his youth) (25 March 1899 – 6 January 1978) was a New Zealand motorcycle racer, famous for setting an under-1,000 cc world record, at Bonneville, 26 August 1967.^[2] This record still stands today. Munro was 68 and was riding a 47-year-old machine when he set his last record.^[3]

Working from his home in Invercargill, he worked for 20 years to highly modify the 1920 Indian motorcycle that he had bought that same year. Munro set his first New Zealand speed record in 1938 and later set seven more. He travelled to compete at the Bonneville Salt Flats, attempting to set world speed records. During his ten visits to the salt flats, he set three speed records, one of which still stands today.

His efforts, and success, are the basis of the motion picture The World's Fastest Indian (2005), starring Anthony Hopkins, and an earlier 1971 short documentary film Burt Munro: Offerings to the God of Speed,^[4] both directed by Roger Donaldson.

Early life[link]

Munro was born in 1899 in Invercargill. His twin sister died at birth^[2] and Munro grew up on a farm in Edendale, east of Invercargill.

Munro's interest in speed began at a young age, riding the family's fastest horse across the farm, despite the complaints of his father. Trips via train to the port at Invercargill were a rare source of excitement, and the arrival of cars, motorcycles and aircraft added to Burt's eagerness to join the world outside of his farm. As Munro's family discouraged his endeavours outside of farm life, he became constantly bored with daily routine, and at the outbreak of World War I, he intended to go to war as soon as he was old enough, for a chance to see the world.^[1]

Munro remained on the family farm until the end of the First World War, when his father sold the farm. At that time, Munro worked on the Otira Tunnel construction until recalled to work with his father on a newly purchased farm.^[1] After this he became a professional speedway rider, but returned home to the family farm at the start of the Great Depression. Finding work as a motorcycle salesman and mechanic, he still raced motorcycles and rose to the top of the New Zealand motorcycle scene, racing on Oreti Beach and later in Melbourne, Australia.^[1]

After World War II, Munro and his wife divorced, and he subsequently gave up work to reside in a lock-up garage.^[5]

Challenges[link]

A replica of the 1920 Indian (with half the exterior removed to show detail) that Burt Munro used to set his record in 1967

Munro's Indian Scout was very early off the production line, being only the 627th Scout to leave the American factory.^[6] The bike had an original top speed of 55 mph (89 km/h).^[2] But this did not satisfy Munro, so in 1926 he decided to start modifying his beloved Indian.

The biggest two challenges for Munro to overcome while modifying his bike were his lack of money and the fact that he worked full time as a motorcycle salesman.^{[citation needed]} He would often work overnight on his bikes (he had a 1936 Velocette MSS as well), then he would go to work in the morning, having had no sleep the night before.

Because Munro was a man of modest means, he would often make parts and tools himself instead of having them professionally built. For example, he would cast parts in old tins, make his own barrels, pistons, flywheels, etc. His micrometer (a precision measuring instrument) was an old spoke.^[2]

In its final stages, the Indian's displacement was 950 cc (as built it was 600 cc) and was driven by a triple chain drive system.^[2]

The "Munro Special," as Munro called his bike, is now owned by a motorcycle enthusiast in New Zealand's South Island, and is on display at E Hayes & Sons, Invercargill.^[7] There is also a second motorcycle purported to be the original "Munro Special" in Te Papa Museum (Wellington).^[8]

Bonneville Salt Flats and Speed Week[link]

The Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, are known worldwide for their many miles of flat, compacted salt, perfect for testing speed machines. During Speed Week, usually in mid-late August, vehicle enthusiasts from around the world gather at Bonneville.^{[citation needed]}

Munro travelled to Bonneville ten times, the first time for "sightseeing" purposes. In the nine times he raced at Bonneville,^{[citation needed]} Munro set three world records, in 1962, 1966 and 1967. He also once qualified at over 200 mph (320 km/h), but that was an unofficial run and was not counted.

Following the misspelling of his name in an American motorcycling magazine in 1957, Bert Munro changed his name to Burt.^[1]

Personal life[link]

Munro had four children—John, June, Margaret and Gwen—with his wife Florence Beryl Martyn, whom he married in 1927. They were divorced in 1947.

Having suffered from angina since the late 1950s, Munro suffered a partial stroke in 1977, and was admitted to hospital. He found his co-ordination had diminished. Frustrated, but wanting his motorcycles to remain in Southland, he sold both machines to a local dealer.^{[citation needed]}

Munro died of natural causes on 6 January 1978, aged 78 years.

Records[link]

• In 1962, he set a world record of 288 km/h (178.95 mph) with his engine bored out to 850 cc (52 cubic inches)^[2]
• In 1966, he set a world record of 270.476 km/h (168.066 mph)^[9]
• In 1967, his engine was bored out to 950 cc (58 cubic inches) and he set a class record of 295.453 km/h (183.586 mph). To qualify he made a one-way run of 305.89 km/h (190.07 mph), the fastest-ever officially-recorded speed on an Indian.^[2] The unofficial speed record (officially timed) is 331 km/h (205.67 mph) for a flying mile.^[2]
• In 2006, he was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.^[10]

[edit] Feature film The World's Fastest Indian

Burt Munro was the subject of a 2005 film, The World's Fastest Indian, based on a composite of his Bonneville speed runs.

Sources[link]

• Burt Munro: Indian Legend of Speed, George Begg (2002)
• One Good Run: The Legend of Burt Munro, Tim Hanna (2006)

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Burt Munro

• E Hayes and Sons: The World's Fastest Indian Exhibition (original motorcyles), The World's Fastest Indian Legend
• The World's Fastest Indian at the Internet Movie Database
• Offerings to the God of Speed at the Internet Movie Database, a documentary
• Motorcycle Hall of Fame bio and photos
• Burt Munro Biography more detailed biography and photos
• “Hero!” article, courtesy of “Classic Bike” magazine to Granite State BMW Riders
• Burt Munro at Find a Grave