Archibald Joseph Cronin

A. J. Cronin was a great author whose many books became famous award-winning films,. A. J. Cronin (born Archibald Joseph Cronin) (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981) was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel, The Citadel (1937), tells of a Scottish doctor in a Welsh mining village, who quickly moves up the career ladder in London. Cronin had observed the venues as a medical inspector of mines and later as a doctor in Harley Street. The book promoted still controversial ideas about medical ethics and helped to inspire the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel of Cronin's, set in the North East of England, is The Stars Look Down. Both have been adapted as films, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. Cronin's novel Country Doctor was adapted as a long-running BBC radio and TV series Dr. Finlay's Casebook, revived many years later. Rosebank Cottage, Cronin's birthplace Archibald Joseph Cronin was born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, the only child of a Presbyterian mother, Jessie Cronin (née Montgomerie), and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin. Cronin often wrote of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, and become glass and china merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870. His maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. Medical career During the First World War, Cronin served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war he trained at various hospitals, including Bellahouston Hospital and Lightburn Hospital in Glasgow, and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. He undertook general practice in a small village on the Clyde, Garelochhead, and in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924 he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. His survey of medical regulations in collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal-dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were published over the next few years. Cronin drew on his medical experience and research on the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels – The Citadel, set in Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening a thriving medical practice of his own in Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer for the Whiteleys department store at this time and becoming increasingly interested in ophthalmology.