Vivien Leigh friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. Olivier and Leigh began an affair while acting as lovers in "Fire Over England" (1937), but Olivier was still married to actress Jill Esmond. During this period, Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel "Gone with the Wind" and instructed her American agent to recommend her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara", and "The Observer" film critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in which Leigh "stunned us all" with the assertion that
Margaret Leigh book of poetry in 1923, "Songs from Tani's Garden", before writing her first novel, "The Passing of the Pengwerns", in 1924. "Harvest of the Moor" recounts her experience farming in Cornwall. In 1939, Leigh rode a horse from Cornwall to Scotland, which became the subject of her third book, "A Kingdom for a Horse". She subsequently settled there, living variously at the Isle of Barra, Fernaig in Ross-shire, Smirisary in Moidart and Inverness. Three of her books relate her experience in crofting communities in north-west Scotland before, during and just after World War II. In 1948, Margaret Leigh converted to