Joseph Storer Clouston (1870-1944) was a Scottish author and historian. He was from an “old Orkney family”, according to his obituary in The Scotsman. After being educated at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh and Magdalen College, Oxford he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in London in 1895, but never practised as a lawyer. Soon after embarking on a career as a writer, he published one of his most popular novels, The Lunatic at Large. He was also a historian, a founder member and second president of the Orkney Antiquarian Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. His The Spy in Black was made into a successful film in the late 1930s. Other works include: Vandrad the Viking; or, The Feud and the Spell (1898), Count Bunker (1906) and The Man from the Clouds (1918). --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.