The novel centres on three very different men: Reactions to the failure of industrial action on safety issues in the coal mines are crystallised in the characters of Davey and Joe, who take vastly different routes in escaping from the working class.

There is also a clear commitment to the idea of nationalising the mines, replacing the mass of small private owners that existed at the time.

Co-scripted by Cronin and directed by Carol Reed, the film stars Michael Redgrave as the idealistic Davey Fenwick and Margaret Lockwood as his wife.

Directed by Gillian Hambleton, the play met with resounding critical success, breathing new life into Cronin's timeless tale.

In Dorothy Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, published two years after Cronin's book, Lord Peter Wimsey's mother starts reading The Stars Look Down, but finds it "very depressing and preachy, and not what I expected from the title.

William Trevor's story "The Children", contained in the collection Cheating at Canasta, has the child reading her dead mother's copy of The Stars Look Down while her father attempts to remarry.