Douglas, Keith Castellain (1920–1944)

English poet. During World War II he served as a tank commander in North Africa, where he wrote some of his finest poems, published after his death in Alamein to Zem Zem (1946). His Collected Poems were published in 1951. His poem ‘Simplify Me When I'm Dead’ is a powerfully moving vision of his own death.

Douglas attended Christ's Hospital school, Sussex, and then Blunden's, Oxford. Initially injured by a mine in North Africa, he returned to service and was killed in action in Normandy shortly after D-day.