L. A. G. Strong was a leading popular writer of his time and, from 1938 until his death in 1958, a director of the important publishing house of Methuen and Company. Strong's fiction often deals with elemental passions in such rugged places as the West Country of England and the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. His lyrical verse is thoughtful, suggesting that his novels and short stories would have been deeper had he not been so prolific and had he not turned his hand to so many other kinds of writing.

Leonard Alfred George Strong was born in Plymouth on 8 March 1896, the elder of the two children and the only son of Leonard Ernest Strong, a businessman, and Marion Jane Mongan Strong. With a half-Irish father and an Irish mother, Strong would frequently write about Ireland and eminent Irishmen and would be elected a member of the Irish Academy of...