The Bay

L.A. Strong (1896-1958) was born in Plymouth, of a half-Irish father and Irish mother, and was educated at Brighton College (where in later life he was a governor) and at Wadham College, Oxford (Open Classical Scholar). There he came under the influence of W. B. Yeats.

He worked as an Assistant Master at Summer Fields, Oxford, between 1917-19 and 1920-30, and as a Visiting Tutor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He was a director of the publishers Methuen Ltd. from 1938 until his death. For many years he was a governor of his old school, Brighton College.

He was a versatile writer of more than 20 novels, as well as plays, children's books, poems, biography, criticism, and film scripts. Some of his poems were set to music by Arthur Bliss. His novel The Brothers was filmed in 1947 by the Scottish director David MacDonald. Selected Poems appeared in 1931, and The Body's Imperfections: Collected Poems in 1957. He also collaborated with Cecil Day-Lewis in compiling anthologies.

He formed a literary partnership with an Irish friend, John Francis Swaine (1880 - 1954), paying Swaine a percentage of royalties for five novels and numerous short stories, published between c.1930 and 1953, which were attributed to Strong. These include the novels Sea Wall (1933), The Bay (1944) and Trevannion (1948). Swaine's short stories described the thoughts and experiences of an Irish character, Mr Mangan, a fictional version of Swaine himself. Strong wrote many works of non fiction and an autobiography of his early years, Green Memory (published posthumously in 1961).