Born in
Cadogan Square,
London, Gunnis was educated at
Eton College. In 1923 he entered the
Colonial Service, serving as private secretary to the
Governor of Uganda (1923–1926) and then the
Governor of Cyprus,
Sir Ronald Storrs (November 1926 – June 1932). From 1932 to 1935 he worked as Inspector of Antiquities for the
Cyprus Museum. In 1936 he was appointed as a member of the Antiquities Advisory board, and published his important book
Historic Cyprus. A guide to its towns and villages, monasteries and castles which remains an important resource on Medieval and Ottoman monuments in Cyprus. He undertook small excavations on behalf of the Cyprus Museum although none of them were published, he excavated at
Enkomi in 1927, at
Styllio near Famagusta in 1928 and at the cemetery at the site of
Kaparka in
Marion. Returning to England in 1939, Gunnis inherited a large fortune with which he settled at Hungershall Lodge with his Turkish Cypriot life partner Namuk Kemal in
Tunbridge Wells and pursued his antiquarian interests. Around 1942 he began compiling an index of monumental sculptors: this may have originally been intended for inclusion in
Katharine Esdaile's projected
Dictionary of British Sculptors, and after her death in 1950 he published his
Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851 (completed in 1951 and published in 1953; Rupert Gunnis died, aged 66, at
Stratfield Saye, the
Duke of Wellington's estate halfway between
Reading and
Basingstoke. He is buried in the Streatfeild Mausoleum in
Chiddingstone churchyard, Kent (
Streatfeild was his mother's maiden name). He left estate valued at £132,279. The author
Evelyn Berckman dedicated her 1967 novel
The Heir of Starvelings to Rupert Gunnis. The novel is an apparently true story, based an anecdotal tales told by Gunnis to the author. His contributions to the art world are cited in the foreword and he also plays a named part in the epilogue section, which is set in 1922. ==Works==