Rob Roy Macgregor: His Life & Times

W. H. Murray, born in Liverpool in 1913 and educated at Glasgow Academy, was then employed by the Union Bank of Scotland. During the thirties he discovered his love for the Scottish mountains. It was when he was captured in the Second World War that he first began to write, but his manuscript was confiscated by the Germans. After the war he decided to write for a living and it was the book he had started while in the prisoner of war camp that became his first published work—Mountaineering in Scotland (1947) was hailed as a masterpiece. In the immediate post-war years he also took a leading role in a number of expeditions to the Himalayas, and his pioneering work in this region prepared the way for Hilary's conquest of Everest in 1953. Murray went on to write over twenty books in a number of fields including mountaineering, history and fiction. He won many awards, including the Literary Award of the U.S.A Education Board, an honorary doctorate from Stirling University and the Mungo Park Medal for Himalayan exploration. He settled with his wife, Anne, in Argyll, and died in 1996.