The Gowk Storm

Nancy Brysson Morrison (1907-1986), was born in Glasgow and educated at the Park School in that city and at Harvington College in London. She came of a talented family who were known as ‘writing Morrisons’. Her brother Thomas and her sister Margaret both became well-known novelists like herself. A very private person who never married, she lived mainly in Glasgow, but also in London and Edinburgh. Edwin Muir and Compton Mackenzie praised the ‘poetic power’ of her prose. Her work was also much admired in America, and indeed her late novel Thea (1962) was first published in New York. The Gowk Storm (1933) was a Book Society Choice, and was successfully dramatised for radio.
An interest in biography resulted in books on a variety of historical and literary figures, from Henry VIII to Thomas and Jane Carlyle.
Her very readable novels, set partly in Glasgow and partly in the Highlands or on the fringe of the Highlands, include Breakers (1930); When the Wind Blows (1937); The Winnowing Years (1949), which won the first Frederick Niven Award; The Hidden Fairing (1951); and The Following Wind (1954).