Tom Hanlin was born in Armadale in 1907. He showed promise at school and was interested in becoming a writer from an early age. However, he had to leave school at fourteen years of age to begin work. He worked on a farm for a year, and then he worked down the mines for the next twenty years, from the age of fifteen until 1945. As a result of an accident, he spent three months in the Royal Infirmary. During that time of convalescence, he wrote five stories, which he was able to sell. One of them, Sunday in the Village, won the annually awarded Sheffield University Prize, available to those who were 'manual workers in or about a coal mine, or have been injured when so employed'. Later, he won the Big Ben prize of £500 for his long story, which became his first novel, Once in Every Lifetime, popular in Europe and Scandinavia, translated into more than a dozen languages, and eventually in a BBC radio version. About the novel, John Steinbeck, 'A wonderful, young, strong, true book.' In 1945, he became a full-time writer and his story Bright and Cheerful is the Day (which includes what is believed to be an overview of Armadale) appeared in the Virginia Quarterly magazine that autumn. In 1946, his second novel, Yesterday will Return, was published. He was a dedicated, conscientious writer who was interested in the process and in the business of writing. One notable essay, written in the 1940s, considered the impact of television and the cinema. Once in Every Lifetime was serialised in Woman's Home Companion. It was a popular story of a man in hospital falling in love with a nurse, and how, despite an unfulfilled relationship, her influence guided him (a familiar story to those aware of Ivor Gurney's relationship with his Armadale nurse, Annie Drummond). In 1949, his novel The Miracle at Cardenrigg was published. His move to London was followed by the publication of his short stories in magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, Lilliput, The Strand Magazine, as well as Virginia Quarterly. He was offered lucrative work in Hollywood, but he rejected it as he did not want to lose his independence. In his late 40s, he developed heart and breathing problems, which led to his death in 1953, leaving behind over thirty short stories, as well as novels and essays, and eight radio plays, two of which were broadcast. One commentator summed up his work as 'motive and pressure and destiny made plain' because his fascination with detail and the overall design of things is often demonstrated in his portrayal of wider issues through the minutiae of daily life.