Life
Strong was born in Plymouth, Devon, England, of a half-Irish father and Irish mother, and was proud of his Irish heritage. As a youth, he considered being a comedian and took lessons in singing. He studied at Brighton College and earned a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, as what was known as an Open Classical Scholar (studies in literature and the arts). There he came under the influence of W. B. Yeats, about whom Strong wrote fairly extensively. Their friendship lasted for twenty years. He gained a wide interest in literature and wrote about many important contemporary authors, including James Joyce, William Faulkner, John Millington Synge, and John Masefield.
He worked as an Assistant Master at Summer Fields, a boys' boarding preparatory school in the outskirts of Oxford, from 1917 to 1919 and from 1920 to 1930, and as a Visiting Tutor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. One of his pupils was a son of Reginald McKenna. 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.
Strong's autobiography, Green Memory, published after his death, described his family (including a grandmother in Ireland), his earliest years, his school-days, and his friendships at Wadham College; among them were Yeats and George Moore.
Following his death, a memorial service was held for him at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on October 3, 1958.
Read more about this topic: Leonard Strong
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean—when boredom seems the very stuff of life.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“There are books ... which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The life of a repo man is always intense.”
—Alex Cox, British screenwriter. Miller (Tracy Walter)