[2] He was a graduate in political science and economics from Athens University, where he was taught by Panagiotis Kanellopoulos (whom he would encounter again in the Greek government in exile in London).
In Greece he had several philosophic studies published - including one on The Struggle of the Solitary Soul and one on The Mythology of Beauty - as well as translations of poems by Holderlin (1938).
[4] For a short period he went to Birmingham to help a team of the Friends Ambulance Unit prepare for relief work in Greece as soon as that country should be liberated from Nazi occupation; he was supported by Elizabeth Cadbury.
This slim book contains sixteen English poems by Capetanakis, two verse translations by him from Prevelakis and one from Elytis and eleven of his essays - 'The Greeks Are Human Beings', 'Ghika', 'Rimbaud', 'Stefan George', 'A Lecture On Proust', 'Dostoevsky', 'Thomas Gray And Horace Walpole', 'A View Of English Poetry', 'Notes On Some Contemporary Writers', 'Charlotte Brontë' and 'An Introduction To Modern Greek Poetry'.
The English poet and teacher Charles Causley (1917-2003) subtitled his poem 'Master and Pupil' "On a theme of Demetrios Capetanakis".