The Birds

I was, for ten years, a tutor of creative writing at The Hill adult college, Abergavenny; long before me a tutor named Frank Baker had run the course. He was known then as a script editor at BBC Wales. But he was much more than that. He had written many novels the most famous of which was "Miss Hargreaves", still read (I heard a radio play adapted from it a couple of years ago).
In 1936 he had written a novel called "The Birds" which got to be more famous than that because of Hitchcock's film of the same name. But look up the film on the net and you'll see that it was "taken from the short story by Daphne Du Maurier".
The stories are the same, Frank Baker's is longer of course, but it's the same story. And Du Maurier's was written much later than Baker's.
Well, I was told that Frank Baker went to see the film and discovered the story was his. So he threatened to take Du Maurier to law but she settled out of court.
This is not what it says on Frank Baker's website: "Although his book had a similar premise and story to Du Maurier's he was advised not to persue litigation against Universal Studios. The affair led to an interesting correspondence with Du Maurier...."