Dunbeath is a town in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the native home of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River etc., most of whose novels are set in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has a really abundant historical landscape, the site of countless Iron Age brochs as well as an early middle ages reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's historical study, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn created: "These tiny straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate elegance. In boyhood we learn more about every square yard of it. We incorporate it physically and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and a sometimes visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken as well as vanishing bunny scuts, a wide range of wild blossom and tiny bird life, the soaring hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the people that once lived far inland in straths as well as hollows, the past as well as the present kept in a moment of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town school.