Dan Davin

Daniel Marcus (Dan) Davin, CBE (1 September 1913 – 28 September 1990), was an author who wrote about New Zealand, although for most of his career he lived in Oxford, England, working for Oxford University Press. The themes of his earliest fiction, in short stories that include Saturday Night, Late Snow, The Apostate, The Basket, The Vigil, and The Milk Round, were growing up in the poor Irish Catholic family of Mick Connolly in Southland.

Early Life

He was born in Southland, New Zealand, into an Irish Catholic family Invercargill, and was educated at local Catholic primary and secondary schools. He won a scholarship for a final school year at Sacred Heart College in Auckland, then a university scholarship to the University of Otago. In 1934 he received First Class Honours in English, and in 1935 a Dip. MA Single Honours in Latin. Winning a Rhodes Scholarship in 1935, he studied at Balliol College Oxford (BA, 1st class 1939, MA 1945). In 1939 he married Winifred "Winnie" Gonley, also from Southland, and they had three daughters.

World War II

He served as an intelligence officer in the New Zealand Division in the Middle East in World War II, being evacuated from Greece and wounded on Crete. He was mentioned in despatches three times and awarded an MBE (Mil.). Writing the official war history Crete took most of his spare time from 1946 to 1953. Post-war he took part in a BBC Radio discussion on the Battle of Monte Cassino with the former German commander Frido von Senger, who had also been a Rhodes Scholar and Desmond (Paddy) Costello, who like Davin had been in Freyberg’s intelligence team. Subsequently he wrote of "New Zealanders at war, post-war tensions, exile and return".

Work

He worked for Clarendon Press, Oxford (England), 1945–78, then as Assistant Secretary to the Delegates of Oxford University Press 1948–70, and Deputy Secretary to the Delegates 1970–78. He was a fellow of Balliol College 1920–78, then an emeritus fellow.

Literature and views of NZ

Two of his novels, Cliffs of Fall (1945) and Not Here, Not Now (1970), are set in Otago University, although Bertram says they are "among his least satisfactory works". Dan and Winnie co-authored a publication for schools by the Department of Education School Publications Branch, Writing in New Zealand: The New Zealand Novel (1956, Parts 1 & 2). They were friends with Joyce Cary.

Chris Laidlaw who used to drink with Dan in Oxford said there was "an abiding sadness about Dan; a melancholy that sprang, I think, from his frustration at being a prophet without honour in his own country. ... He was an early victim of the great New Zealand clobbering machine and often warned me to beware of this." Chris quoted Dan's view that in New Zealand there is a very strong "stereoptype that controls what you can say or be seen to do." (Rights of passage : beyond the New Zealand identity crisis : Laidlaw, Chris, Auckland, N.Z. : Hodder Moa Beckett, 1999. p.36)

Awards

In 1984 Davin was awarded a D.Litt. from the University of Otago. In the 1987 New Year Honours, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to literature.[1]

Death

He died in Oxford, where he had been "a heroic drinker in the college buttery and a chosen string of Oxford pubs" (Bertram). According to Historian Rory Sweetman, who specializes in the history of the Irish in New Zealand, Davin is little remembered in Oxford, but is "cherished" in New Zealand.[2]

Books

His works of fiction are:

He also wrote collections of short stories and non-fiction books, including:

External links

References

  1. ↑ London Gazette (supplement), No. 50766, 30 December 1986. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
  2. ↑ VELTKAMP-SMITH, Pat (2 September 2013). "Davin's 100th birthday celebrated". The Southland Times. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
  • James Bertram, Dan Davin, Zealand Writers and Their Work series, Oxford University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-19-558095-8
  • Keith Ovenden, A Fighting Withdrawal: The Life of Dan Davin, Writer, Soldier, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.
  • James McNeish, Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in Exile in the Time of Hitler and Mao Tse-tung, Vintage, Auckland, 2003
  • Janet Wilson (ed.), Intimate Stranger: Reminiscences of Dan Davin, Steele Roberts, Wellington, 2000.
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