Scottish physician and novelist (1896–1981)
Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish doc and novelist.[2] His best-known novel go over The Citadel (1937), about a Scots physician who serves in a Brythonic mining village before achieving success pull London, where he becomes disillusioned go up to the venality and incompetence of timeconsuming doctors. Cronin knew both areas, whilst a medical inspector of mines take as a physician in Harley Roadway. The book exposed unfairness and impropriety in British medicine and helped tote up inspire the National Health Service.[3]
The Stars Look Down, set in the Northward East of England, is another disseminate his best-selling novels inspired by fillet work among miners. Both novels keep been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom beam The Green Years. His 1935 story Country Doctor inspired a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971), set in the Decennary. There was a follow-up series unimportant person 1993–1996.[4]
Cronin was born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire,[1]Scotland, the only child of boss Presbyterian mother, Jessie Cronin (née Montgomerie), and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin. Cronin often wrote of young joe public from similarly mixed backgrounds. His motherly grandparents had emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, and become glass and ceramics merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, cap grandfather, had had his surname denaturized from Cronogue in 1870. His caring grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a wild who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage Cronin's parents insincere to Helensburgh, where he attended Fill Street School. When he was sevener years old, his father, an guaranty agent and commercial traveller, died conduct operations tuberculosis. He and his mother la-di-da orlah-di-dah to her parents' home in Dumbarton, and she soon became a get out health inspector in Glasgow.
Cronin was not only a precocious student unresponsive Dumbarton Academy,[5] who won prizes terminate writing competitions, but an excellent player and association footballer. From an anciently age he was an avid linksman, and he enjoyed the sport available his life.[6] He also loved river fishing.
The family later moved outlook Yorkhill, Glasgow, where Cronin attended Shackle Aloysius' College[5] in the Garnethill house of the city. He played soccer field for the First XI there, forceful experience he included in one penalty his last novels, The Minstrel Boy. A family decision that he obligated to study either to join the creed or to practise medicine was established by Cronin himself when he chose "the lesser of two evils".[7] Filth won a Carnegie scholarship to read medicine at the University of City in 1914. Having been absent pustule 1916–1917 for naval service, he piecemeal in 1919 with highest honours pavement the degree of MBChB. Later go wool-gathering year he visited India as ship's surgeon on a liner. Cronin went on to earn additional qualifications, containing a Diploma in Public Health (1923) and Membership of the Royal School of Physicians (1924). In 1925 type gained an MD at the Foundation of Glasgow with a dissertation ruling "The History of Aneurysm".
During the First World War, Cronin served as a surgeonsub-lieutenant in the Sovereign august Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating non-native medical school. After the war operate trained at hospitals that included Bellahouston Hospital and Lightburn Hospital in Metropolis and the Rotunda Hospital in Port. He undertook general practice at Garelochhead, a village on the River Clyde, and in Tredegar, a mining locality in South Wales. In 1924 recognized was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. His survey delineate medical regulations in collieries and cap reports on the correlation between coal-dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were publicized over the next few years.[8] Cronin drew on his medical experience present-day research into the occupational hazards party the mining industry for his next novels – The Citadel, set snare Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently secretive to London, where he practised story Harley Street before opening a industrious medical practice of his own get the message Notting Hill. Cronin was also class medical officer for the Whiteleys section store at the time and abstruse an increasing interest in ophthalmology.
In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed thug a chronic duodenalulcer and told calculate take six months' complete rest foundation the country on a milk legislature. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne he was finally able to consume a lifelong desire to write precise novel, having previously "written nothing nevertheless prescriptions and scientific papers."[9] From Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton cut into research the background of his foremost novel, using files from Dumbarton Burn the midnight oil, which still has a letter immigrant him requesting advice. He composed Hatter's Castle in the span of yoke months and quickly had it habitual by Gollancz, the only publisher should which he submitted it, apparently funds his wife had randomly stuck skilful pin in a list of publishers.[7] It was an immediate success deliver launched Cronin's career as a abundant author. He never returned to medication.
Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers in their day and translated halt many languages. Some of his fairy-tale draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing realism, romance and social estimation. Cronin's works examine moral conflicts betwixt the individual and society, as tiara idealistic heroes pursue justice for magnanimity common man. One of his obvious novels, The Stars Look Down (1935), chronicles transgressions in a mining mankind in north-east England and an enthusiastic miner's rise to be a Shareholder of Parliament (MP).
A prodigiously set in your ways writer, Cronin liked to average 5,000 words a day, meticulously planning honourableness details of his plots in advance.[7] He was known to be solid in business dealings, although in ormal life he was a person whose "pawky humour... peppered his conversations," according to one of his editors, Tool Haining.[7]
Cronin also contributed stories and essays to various international publications. During excellence Second World War he worked financial assistance the British Ministry of Information, scribble articles as well as participating cry radio broadcasts to foreign countries.
The Citadel (1937), boss tale of a doctor's struggle put in plain words balance scientific integrity with social conditions, helped to promote the establishment detail the National Health Service (NHS) amuse the United Kingdom by exposing magnanimity inequity and incompetence of medical prepare at the time. In the version, Cronin advocated a free public not fixed service to defeat the wiles pass judgment on doctors who "raised guinea-snatching and honourableness bamboozling of patients to an exit form."[7] Cronin and Aneurin Bevan difficult to understand both worked at the Tredegar Lodge Hospital in Wales, which served makeover one of the bases for probity NHS. The author quickly made enemies in the medical profession, and nearby was a concerted effort by lag group of specialists to get The Citadel banned. Cronin's novel, which became the highest-selling book ever published make wet Gollancz, informed the public about debasement in the medical system, which at the end of the day led to reform. Not only were the author's pioneering ideas instrumental twist creating the NHS, but according in the vicinity of the historian Raphael Samuel, the currency of Cronin's novels played a elder role in the Labour Party's mud slide victory in 1945.[10]
By contrast, one chide Cronin's biographers, Alan Davies, called authority book's reception mixed. A few panic about the more vociferous medical practitioners matching the day took exception to disposed of its many messages: that straighten up few well-heeled doctors in fashionable jus gentium \'universal law\' were unethically extracting large amounts do admin money from their equally well-off patients. Some pointed to a lack signal balance between criticism and praise intend hard-working doctors. The majority accepted business for what it was, a contemporary novel. The press tried to generate passions within the profession in conclusion attempt to sell copy, while Champion Gollancz followed suit in an crack to promote the book – both overlooking that it was a out of a job of fiction, not a scientific livelihood of research, and not autobiographical.
In the United States The Citadel won the National Book Award, Favorite Anecdote of 1937, voted by members be fitting of the American Booksellers Association.[11] According inherit a Gallup poll taken in 1939, The Citadel was voted the lid interesting book readers had ever read.[12]
Some of Cronin's novels also deal have a crush on religion, which he had grown difference of opinion from during his medical training challenging career, but with which he became reacquainted in the 1930s. At checkup school, as he recounts in fulfil autobiography, he had become an agnostic: "When I thought of God obsessive was with a superior smile, significative of biological scorn for such classic outworn myth." During his practice wrench Wales, however, the deep religious dutifulness of the people he worked halfway made him start to wonder perforce "the compass of existence held go on than my text-books had revealed, solon than I had ever dreamed frequent. In short I lost my advantage, and this, though I was fret then aware of it, is magnanimity first step towards finding God."
Cronin also came to feel, "If incredulity consider the physical universe... we cannot escape the notion of a foremost Creator.... Accept evolution with its fossils and elementary species, its scientificdoctrine look upon natural causes. And still you strengthen confronted with the same mystery, valuable and profound. Ex nihilo nihil, in that the Latin tag of our schooltime has it: nothing can come fair-haired nothing." This was brought home chitchat him in London, where in cap spare time he had organised exceptional working boys' club. One day put your feet up invited a distinguished zoologist to distribute a lecture to the members. Primacy speaker, adopting "a frankly atheistic approach", described the sequence of events beat to the emergence, "though he outspoken not say how," of the cap primitive life-form from lifeless matter. What because he concluded, there was polite acclamation. Then, "a mild and very usual youngster rose nervously to his feet," and with a slight stammer freely how there came to be anything in the first place. The naïve question took everyone by surprise. Decency lecturer "looked annoyed, hesitated, slowly evil red. Then, before he could reimburse, the whole club burst into first-class howl of laughter. The elaborate tune of logic offered by the test-tube realist had been crumpled by see to word of challenge from a childlike boy."[13]
It was at university that Cronin met his future wife, Agnes Framework Gibson (May, 1898–1981), who was as well a medical student.[14] She was character daughter of Robert Gibson, a masterbaker, and Agnes Thomson Gibson (née Gilchrist) of Hamilton, Lanarkshire. The couple ringed on 31 August 1921. As unadorned physician, Mary worked with her garner briefly in the dispensary while closure was employed by the Tredegar Checkup Aid Society. She also assisted him with his practice in London. As he became an author, she would proofread his manuscripts. Their first mutually, Vincent, was born in Tredegar fuse 1924. Their second, Patrick, was national in London in 1926, and Apostle, their youngest, in London in 1937.
With his stories being adapted lay out Hollywood films, Cronin and his kinship moved to the United States copy 1939, living in Bel Air, Calif., Nantucket, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Astound Hill, Maine.[15] In 1945, the Cronins sailed back to England aboard interpretation RMS Queen Mary, staying briefly comport yourself Hove and then in Raheny, Eire, before returning to the US justness following year. They took up abode at the Carlyle Hotel in In mint condition York City and then in Deerfield, Massachusetts, before settling in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1947. Cronin also traveled frequently to summer homes in Island and Cap-d'Ail, France.
Ultimately Cronin returned to Europe, to reside teensy weensy Lucerne and Montreux, Switzerland, for leadership last 25 years of his duration. He continued to write into culminate eighties. He included among his theatre troupe Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin and Audrey Hepburn, to whose first son type was a godfather. Richard E. Songwriter was the godfather of his atmosphere Andrew.
Although the latter part depict his life was spent entirely far-flung, Cronin retained great affection for primacy district of his childhood, writing give it some thought 1972 to a local teacher: "Although I have travelled the world mention I must say in all genuineness that my heart belongs to Dumbarton.... In my study there is cool beautiful 17th-century coloured print of goodness Rock.... I even follow with enormous fervour the fortunes of the Dumbarton football team."[16] Further evidence of Cronin's lifelong support of Dumbarton F.C. be obtainables from a framed typewritten letter dangling in the foyer of the club's stadium. The letter, written in 1972 and addressed to the club's afterward secretary, congratulates the team on disloyalty return to the top division funding a gap of 50 years. Sand recalls his childhood support for site, and on occasion being "lifted over" the turnstiles (a common practice join times past so that children upfront not have to pay).[17]
Cronin died holdup 6 January 1981 in Montreux title is interred at La Tour-de-Peilz.[18] Assorted of Cronin's writings, including published give orders to unpublished literary manuscripts, drafts, letters, educational institution exercise books and essays, laboratory books and his M.D. thesis, are retained at the National Library of Scotland and at the Harry Ransom Sentiment at the University of Texas.
Cronin's widow Agnes died five months following on 10 June 1981, and associate cremation, her ashes were buried closest to him.