In 1962, I started as a child care officer with Hertfordshire Children’s Department. I was informed that I would take over cases from John Stroud, the boys’ welfare officer who had been promoted. “You know who he is, don't you?”, said my senior officer. To my shame I did not. “He's the novelist, he wrote The shorn lamb”, she informed me, in reverential tones. A few days later, John Stroud came to see me. He came into my office and sat on the table, as the room was so small that it could take only one chair. This was difficult for he was a large built man. Sensing my nervousness, he spoke kindly and talked about some of the boys I would be supervising. He then took me to visit a couple of children's homes. As we drove, his manner was mild, witty, almost zany, yet there was a certain hardness about him. At this time, he was already both a successful child care practitioner and a widely-read child care novelist.

Early life

John Stroud was born on 31 March 1923 in Maidstone, Kent. The lights in his street were still fired by gas and tradespeoples’ horse-drawn carts were common. His father was a local government clerk, his mother a teacher who had been an active suffragette. John, a sister nine years older and a brother four years younger, had a comfortable upbringing. Indeed, when John was about six his mother had a small legacy and bought the family's first car: a Wolseley Hornet.

Mr and Mrs Stroud were keen amateur theatre and concert participants and performed with the Maidstone Dramatic Society. His father became well known locally as a producer and John frequently accompanied him to rehearsals and shows. In a private memoir, he recorded, “I liked theatre work and would like to have done more but I was much too shy, nervous and introverted to be any good on stage”. He continued, “I was a solitary person. I did a great deal of reading and I invented and played many games on my own, and I daydreamed a lot. Much of my dreaming was about being in the theatre in one capacity or another. My other wish was to be a writer” (Stroud, undated, p 6).