Jim Page, president of the Housman Society, visited Street today to hand over on long loan to Street Library a portrait of Laurence Housman.

Housman, brother to the more famous poet and scholar A.E.Housman, was one of Street's most eminent residents from the 1920s to his death in the 1960s.

Laurence was a prolific author, with nearly 100 books to his name, and a successful playwright whose play on the life of Queen Victoria had a long run on Broadway.

He is important as an illustrator, and the Housman Society also handed over a self-portrait that Laurence drew and decorated with a characteristic intricate border. It shows the artist as St Francis, someone he much admired and about whom he wrote a series of successful short plays.

Lynne Hughes received the pictures and is planning how best to display and label all the library's pictures.