Douglas Stewart is one of the great all-rounders, perhaps the greatest, of our literature; one recalls that Nancy Keesing once described him as probably the most versatile writer who ever lived in this country.

Foremost as a poet, the subject matter of his poetry is astonishingly wide-ranging from ballads and narrative poems to the most delicate and delightful of nature and love lyrics. He has been a notable and inspiring literary editor; in a period that has now passed into history he so exploited the creative potentialities of radio to communicate culturally that he achieved an international reputation as a verse playwright; and his literary criticism down the years has been consistently respected by his peers.