Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film. He also created the Dr. Finlay character, the hero of a series of stories that served as the basis for the popular BBC television and radio series entitled Dr. Finlay's Casebook.
Education
Cronin was not only a precocious student at Dumbarton Academy who won many prizes and writing competitions, but also an excellent athlete and footballer. From an early age, he was an avid golfer, a sport he enjoyed throughout his life, and he loved salmon fishing as well. The family later moved to Yorkhill, Glasgow, where he attended St Aloysius' College in the Garnethill area of the city. He played football for the First XI there, an experience he included in one of his last novels, The Minstrel Boy. A family decision that he should study for either the church or medicine was settled by Cronin himself, who chose "the lesser of two evils." He won a Carnegie scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1914. He was absent during the 1916-1917 session for naval service. In 1919 he graduated with highest honours, with the degree of MB, ChB. Later that year he made a trip to India as ship's surgeon on a liner. Cronin went on to earn additional degrees, including a Diploma in Public Health (1923) and his MRCP (1924). In 1925, he was awarded an M.D. from the University of Glasgow for his dissertation, entitled "The History of Aneurysm."
Career
During World War I 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 and Lightburn Hospitals in Glasgow and Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. He undertook general practice work in a small village on the Clyde, Garelochhead, as well as in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924, he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain, and over the next few years, his survey of medical regulations in collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were published.
He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening his own thriving medical practice at 152,Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer for Whiteleys at this time and was becoming increasingly interested in ophthalmology.
In 1930 from Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton to research the background of his first novel, Hatter's Castle. This novel, which was an immediate and sensational success, launched his career as a prolific author, and he never returned to practising medicine.
Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers which were translated into numerous languages. His strengths included his compelling narrative skill and his powers of acute observation and graphic description. Although noted for its deep social conscience, his work is filled with colourful characters and witty dialogue. Some of his stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing realism, romance, and social criticism. Cronin's works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man.
A prodigiously fast writer, Cronin liked to average 5,000 words a day, meticulously planning the details of his plots in advance. He was known to be tough in business dealings, although in private life he was a person whose "pawky humour...peppered his conversations," according to one of his editors, Peter Haining.
Cronin also contributed a large number of stories and essays to various international publications.
Religion
"When I thought of God it was with a superior smile, indicative of biological scorn for such an outworn myth".
"If we consider the physical universe,... we cannot escape the notion of a primary Creator.... Accept evolution with its fossils and elementary species, its scientific doctrine of natural causes. And still you are confronted with the same mystery, primary and profound. Ex nihilo nihil, as the Latin tag of our schooldays has it: nothing can come of nothing."