Leonard Alfred George Strong (1896 – 17 August 1958) was an English writer, known as a novelist, journalist, poet and director of the publishers Methuen Ltd.

Life

He was born in Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...

, of a half-Irish father and Irish mother, and was educated at Brighton College

Brighton College

Brighton College is an institution divided between a Senior School known simply as Brighton College, the Prep School and the Pre-Prep School. All of these schools are co-educational independent schools in Brighton, England, sited immediately next to each another. The Senior School caters for...

 (where in later life he was a governor) and at Wadham College, Oxford

Wadham College, Oxford

Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...

 (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

Central School of Speech and Drama

The Central School of Speech and Drama was founded in London in 1906 by Elsie Fogerty to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students...

. 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

Brighton College

Brighton College is an institution divided between a Senior School known simply as Brighton College, the Prep School and the Pre-Prep School. All of these schools are co-educational independent schools in Brighton, England, sited immediately next to each another. The Senior School caters for...

.

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

Arthur Bliss

‎Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...

. His novel The Brothers was filmed in 1947 by the Scottish director David MacDonald

David MacDonald (director)

David MacDonald was a British film director, writer and producer. His first major film as director was The Brothers.-Select filmography:*The Last Curtain...

. Selected Poems appeared in 1931, and The Body's Imperfections: Collected Poems in 1957. He also collaborated with Cecil Day-Lewis

Cecil Day-Lewis

Cecil Day-Lewis CBE was an Irish poet and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake...

 in compiling anthologies.

Verse

• Dublin Days
• The Lowery Road
• Difficult Love
• Northern Light
• Call to The Swan
• The Body's Imperfection

Fiction

• Dewer Rides
• The English Captain
• The Jealous Ghost
• The Garden
• The Brothers
• Don Juan and the Wheelbarrow
• Sea Wall
• Corporal Tune
• The Seven Arms
• Mr Sheridan's Umbrella
• Tuesday Afternoon
• The Last Enemy
• The Swift Shadow
• The Open Sky
• Sun on the Water
• The Bay
• The Unpractised Heart
• All Fall Down
• The Director
• Othello's Occupation
• Travellers (James Tait Black Memorial Prize
  James Tait Black Memorial Prize
  Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...
  
  , 1945)
• Trevannion
• Darling Tom
• The Hill of Howth
• Deliverance
• Treason in the Egg
• Light above the Lake (posthumous)
• A Gift from Christy Keogh (in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
  The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
  The Queen's Book of the Red Cross was published in November 1939 in afundraising effort to aid the Red Cross during World War II.The book was sponsored by Queen Elizabeth, and itscontents were contributed by fifty British authors and artists....
  
  )

Belles lettres

• Common Sense about Poetry
• A Letter to W. B. Yeats
• (with M. Redlich) Life in English Literature
• The Hansom Cab and The Pigeons
• The Minstrel Boy
• The Man who asked Questions
• Shake Hands and Come out Fighting
• John McCormack: The Story of a Singer
• English for Pleasure
• A Tongue in your Head
• The Sacred River
• Maud Cherrill
• Personal Remarks
• The Writer's Trade
• Dr Quicksilver
• Flying Angel
• The Rolling Road
• Green Memory (autobiography, posth., 1961).