A fighting withdrawal

Dan Davin was a man of paradoxes: a New Zealander who lived most of his life in Oxford; a man of action who fought in the front line during the Second World War, and made his reputation as a publisher and novelist; a devoted family man who nevertheless led a passionate personal life outside his marriage.

Born into an Irish Catholic working-class family in the New Zealand province of Southland, Davin prospered through his intellectual prowess, eventually winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in 1935. At the outbreak of war he joined the army and served with the New Zealand Division in Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy.

The future official historian of the Crete campaign, he served in army intelligence before settling in London and then Oxford, where he began publishing his novels and made the friendship of fellow writers including Dylan Thomas and Julian Maclaren-Ross. He rose to become Academic Publisher at Oxford University Press, instrumental in the publication of major scholarly works and the friend and confidant of Louis MacNeice, Joyce Cary, A. J. P. Taylor and many others.

His often turbulent private life, in contrast to the domestic stability of the home that he made with his extraordinary wife Winnie, and their three daughters, nevertheless was central to his creative life until the tragedy and distress of his last years.