Douglas, Keith Castellain

(1920-1944)

   Born at Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, his father was a World War I Army officer who left the family when his son was seven. Educated at Edgeborough School, Guildford, and at Christ's Hospital, Sussex, Douglas early revealed talents as artist, poet, and sportsman. He went up to Merton College, Oxford, in 1938, where he was greatly influenced by his tutor, Edmund Blunden, soldier-poet of WWI (see entry). His education at Oxford was cut short by the outbreak of war. He enlisted in 1940 and by 1941 he was serving as a tank commander in North Africa, where some of his most powerful poems were written. He survived being wounded by a mine in January 1943 but was killed at the Normandy landing, outside the village of St. Pierre. His posthumous publications: Alamein to Zem-Zem, 1946. Collected Poems, 1951 (edited by J. Waller and G.S. Fraser). Douglas' Selected Poems, 1964 (edited by Ted Hughes). Complete Poems, 1979 (edited by Desmond Graham). Some of his poems: "Behavior of Fish in an Egyptian Tea Garden," "Cairo Jag," "Desert Flowers," "Simplify Me When I'm Dead," "The Offensive," "Waterloo."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. First Lines, Poems Written in Youth, from Herbert to Heaney. Jon Stallworthy, ed. Carcanet, 1987. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Complete Poems of Keith Douglas. Introduction by Ted Hughes, Faber and Faber, 2000. The Oxford Book of War Poetry. Jon Stallworthy, Oxford University Press, 1984. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.