Scottish Authors > Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham Travel writer & Essayist 1852-1936

Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham was born on 24th May 1852 in London where his father Major William Bontine was serving with the Scots Greys. By the time he died in Buenos Aires in 1936, Graham had travelled extensively in Europe, North and South Africa, and North and South America, gaining for himself the deserved reputation as a cultured, cosmopolitan hispanophile. However, by heritage, upbringing and temperament, he was Scotissimus Scotorum, and part of a complex genealogical tree that saw amongst his forebears many of the famous Grahams of Scottish history.

An inveterate letter-writer in his early travel adventures in Latin America, he began his literary life after the demise of his political career as a Radical MP (1886-92). Although Don Roberto, as his friends called him, is perhaps best known to many as a traveller and adventurer, a character, even an eccentric, he has left behind a solid corpus of some thirty books of sketches, biographies, histories and travel literature, not to mention translations, prefaces, pamphlets and other miscellaneous works.

When he did come to write his first work he treated matters close to home. Notes on the District of Menteith (1895), a travel guide "for tourists and others", is still a valuable vademecum for those who visit that beautiful misty area around the family home at Gartmore, and the Lake of Menteith. Graham's pithy remarks on the Scottish character, customs, history and other topics enable the book to transcend the purely regional.

Since Notes on the District of Menteith is the only full-scale book devoted exclusively to Scotland, Graham's reputation as a Scottish writer rests on his Scottish sketches, some fifty out of a total production of two hundred, dating from Father Archangel of Scotland (1896) up through collections like The Ipane, Success, Faith, Hope, Charity, Progress, His people, A Hatchment, Brought forward, Redeemed, Writ in sand, and Mirages, his swan song published in 1936. In The Scottish sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham (Scottish Academic Press, 1982) some attempt has been made to categorise these varied pieces, devoted to (i) landscapes and places, (ii) the Scottish character, (iii) scenes and situations, (iv) types and figures, (v) the Scots abroad, (vi) Scottish stories. During his forty year career, one can also see a certain evolution from the first decade, against the excesses of kailyard sentimentality (e.g. The Ipane, 1899). His middle period up to about 1916 (Brought forward) represents the bulk of his work, with realistic portrayal of Scottish people and places. The third stage coincides with his support of Scottish nationalism (e.g. Redeemed, 1927) and nostalgia for a heroic Scotland now gone.

When Don Roberto died in Argentina on 20 March 1936, he received a countrywide tribute from a people whose culture he also immortalised in his South American sketches, before his body was shipped home to be buried with his wife in the ruined Augustinian priory on the island of Inchmahome. The following year, June 1937, a monument to Graham was unveiled at Castlehill, Dumbarton, near the family home at Ardoch. In recent years it has been moved to Gartmore, closer to the Graham estate. The last three decades have seen something of a revival of interest in this neglected writer.

John Walker

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