page_title: A. J. Cronin
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: A. J. Cronin / Family
caption_attribution_description: A. J. Cronin with family
context_page_description: Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel The Citadel tells of a Scottish doctor in a Welsh mining village, who shoots up the career ladder in London. Cronin had seen the venues as a medical inspector of mines and later as a doctor in Harley Street. The book promoted still controversial ideas on medical ethics and helped to inspire the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel of his, set in the North East of England, is The Stars Look Down. Both have been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His novella Country Doctor became a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, revived many years later.
context_section_description: It was at university that Cronin met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson (May) (1898–1981), who was also a medical student. She was the daughter of Robert Gibson, a master baker, and Agnes Thomson Gibson (née Gilchrist) of Hamilton, Lanarkshire. The couple married on 31 August 1921. As a physician, May worked with her husband briefly in the dispensary while he was employed by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society; she also assisted him with his practice in London. When he became an author, she would proofread his manuscripts. Their first son, Vincent, was born in Tredegar in 1924. Their second son, Patrick, was born in London in 1926. Andrew, their youngest son, was born in London in 1937.
  With his stories being adapted for Hollywood films, Cronin and his family moved to the United States in 1939, living in Bel Air, California, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Blue Hill, Maine. In 1945, the Cronins sailed back to England aboard the RMS Queen Mary, staying briefly in Hove and then in Raheny, Ireland, before returning to the US the following year. They then took up residence at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City and then in Deerfield, Massachusetts, before settling in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1947. Ever the nomad, Cronin also travelled frequently to summer homes in Bermuda and Cap-d'Ail, France.
caption: Cronin with family in 1938
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