John Waller's inherited income went; business ventures thrived and failed. Sadly it ended his writing - aside from a diary he kept.In 1976 Waller joined us in setting up the Salamander Oasis Trust - all Middle East poets Originally our intent was just to reprint Oasis It cried out for a reprint But then John asked a pertinent question. Where were the hundreds - thousands - of manuscripts we did not use in the Middle East, because of space? Paper was rationed. Could we see them - select and publish? Many at the time had been returned by army post - efficient and free. Others, I regretted, had been in a box lost between Alexandria and Taranto. So we began our appeals for poetry through the BBC and the press that drew thousands of manuscripts over the years, from all theatres of war, leading to four anthologies and soon five.Before he moved to the Sussex coast, John Waller lived in Isleworth, where I conferred with him on our first anthology It was an old house It smelt old.

A picture in oils of an ancestor General Waller looked into space. Unlike the last Waller baronet, the general would have preferred a parade-ground. Could the general have known that by an odd quirk - different Waller branches failing to produce a male heir - the baronetcy would pass to the son of Captain Stanier Waller, who died of wounds from the First World War leaving his son to be brought up by his widow, Alice - a barmaid before she married. His mother dominated John's early years and influenced his life throughout.

For John also would not produce an heir - let alone a male heir A failed marriage. He had other preferences.John Waller somehow held on for his last years, looked after by his devoted carer, Robby, and his sister Elizabeth at their Ventnor home. He did not die in a bar but in bed, peacefully, the parties of Cairo left far behind.A wasted talent? My answer must be yes. Maybe the clue to his life came in his long poem at Oxford in 1941, where he founded his magazine Kingdom Come It is in the title, "Confessions of Peter Pan". It ends:To live as for loveCarry the thunder of raging youthHopeful to the new building.Live as for love.Victor SelwynJohn Stanier Waller, writer, poet, journalist: born Oxford 27 July 1917; Greenwood Award for Poetry 1947; FRSL 1948; succeeded 1954 as seventh Baronet; Keats Prize 1974; married 1974 Anne Eileen Mileham (marriage dissolved); died Ventnor, Isle of Wight 22 January 1995.. Birthdays King Harald V of Norway, 58; Sir John Bourn, Comptroller and Auditor General, 61; Professor Ruth Bowden, anatomist, 80; Mr Simon Coombs MP, 48; Mrs Jilly Cooper, author and journalist, 58; M Hubert de Givenchy, fashion designer, 68; Sir Colville Deverell, former overseas governor, 88; Mr Leslie Durbin, silversmith, 82; Dame Janet Fookes MP, 59; Sir John Goulden, ambassador to Turkey, 54; Mr Carron Greig, company chairman, 70; Sir Michael Grylls MP, 61; Sir Conrad Heron, former senior civil servant, 79; Sir Reginald Hibbert, former ambassador to France, 73; Sir John McGregor Hill, former chairman, British Nuclear Fuels, 74; Lord Hunter, a former Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, 82; Mr Peter McEnery, actor, 55; Mr Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, 71; Professor Sir Rupert Myers, scientist, 74; General Sir Robert Pascoe, former Adjutant-General, 63; Sir Ashley Ponsonby, Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, 74; Lt-Gen Sir John Richards, former Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, 68; Professor Frederick Rimmer, Emeritus Professor of Music, Glasgow University, 81; Miss Nina Simone, singer, 61; Mr Richard Turner-Warwick, surgeon and urologist, 70; Professor Leslie Wagner, Principal and Chief Executive, Leeds Metropolitan University, 52; Mr David Wood, actor and playwright, 51. AnniversariesBirths: Peter III, Tsar of Russia, 1728; Anne Grant, poet and essayist, 1755; Friedrich Karl von Savigny, jurist, 1779; Carl Czerny, pianist, teacher and writer, 1791; John Henry Newman, Cardinal, 1801; Jean-Louis- Ernest Meissonier, painter, 1815; Ludwig Beckmann, painter, 1822; Clment- Philibert-Lo Delibes, composer, 1836; Charles-Marie Jean-Albert Widor, organist and composer, 1845; George Lansbury, statesman, 1859; Gertie Millar, Countess of Dudley, musical comedy actress, 1879; Sacha Guitry, actor, playwright and director, 1885; Bernard Griffin, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, 1899; Anas Nin, author, 1903; Raymond Queneau, novelist and critic, 1903; Wystan Hugh Auden, poet, 1907; Douglas Bader, Second World War fighter pilot, 1910; Tad Dameron (Tadley Ewing Peake), jazz pianist, composer and arranger, 1917.Deaths: Pope Julius II, 1513; Robert Southwell, poet, Jesuit and martyr, hanged 1595; Baruch Spinoza, philosopher, 1677; Jethro Tull, agricultural writer, 1741; John Charles Felix Rossi, sculptor, 1839; Constant Troyon, painter, 1865; John Pettie, painter, 1893; Henry Duff Traill, author, 1900; Karl Begas, sculptor, 1916; Kurt Eisner, Bavarian premier, assassinated in Munich 1919; Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell), novelist, 1935; George Ellery Hale, astronomer, 1938; Sir Frederick Banting, scientist, killed in an air crash 1941; Jacques Becker, film director, 1960; Malcolm X (Little), black leader, murdered 1965; Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey, pathologist, 1968; Louis Hayward (Seafield Grant), actor, 1985; Shigechiyo Izumi, a Japanese, at the age of 120 years, 237 days, 1986; Victor Canning, author, 1986.On this day: John Wilkes MP, expelled from the House of Commons, was on this day found guilty of reprinting and publishing an "impious libel", the Essay on Woman, 1764; freedom of worship was established in France, 1795; Richard Trevithick demonstrated a self-powered railway locomotive in Glamorgan, Wales, 1804; the British Post Office inaugurated a mail- bag service operated by pneumatic conveyors below streets, 1863; the first republic of Cuba was founded, 1901; the Apollo Theatre, London, opened, 1901; Houston, Texas, was partly destroyed by fire, 1912; the Battle of Verdun commenced, 1916; the first London performance of the operetta The Lilac Domino was staged, 1918; the British protectorate over Egypt ended, 1922; the New Statesman was founded, 1931; it was announced that British women aged 60 and over would receive the Old Age Pension, 1940; General Eisenhower became supreme commander of Allied forces in North Africa, 1943; a mutiny in the Indian navy occurred at Bombay, 1946; identity cards were abolished in Britain, 1952; in the United States, John Ehrlichman, H.R.