Ewart Milne

During his time in England and Spain, Milne got to know the left-leaning poets who supported the Republican cause, including W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis.

Having taken a pro-British line in neutral Ireland, he was informed by Karl Petersen, the German press attache in Dublin, that he was on the Nazi death list.

Milne regarded his return to Dublin in 1962 as a disaster, overshadowed as his four-year stay was by quarrels with the establishment, the discovery of betrayal by a friend and the death of his wife from lung cancer.

Politically he remained involved and spoke alongside Auberon Waugh at the rally on behalf of Biafra in 1968, but his views moved further to the right in later years.

In addition, Milne frequently entered into a poetic dialogue with his contemporaries, but besides Yeats these included Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath, among many others.

[12] These were supplemented by the autobiographically based stories he wrote at the time, only three of which were published in the 1930s; they and the remaining four, plus a later account of his involvement in a gun-running deal, appeared only in 1985 (Drums Without End, Isle of Skye).

Selection for the latter was left to Patrick Galvin and Thelma Milne prior to the move back to Dublin and overemphasises the Irish side of his writing.

Milne's 80th birthday was celebrated by the publication of a book of poems largely centred on his youth, The Folded Leaf (Aquila, Isle of Skye, 1983), as well as a special issue of the literary magazine Prospice (#14) and an hour-long poetry reading that he gave in Dublin.