Background
Keith William Ovenden was born on August 6, 1943, in London, England, to Alfred William and Dorothy Naomi (Wright) Ovenden.
Kiel, Newcastle ST5 5BG, UK
In 1966, Ovenden received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Keele in England.
500 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
In 1967, Ovenden received a Master of Arts from the University of Michigan.
Oxford OX1 2JD, UK
Ovenden received a Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1971.
(Ovenden draws on public and private papers to paint a com...)
Ovenden draws on public and private papers to paint a compelling portrait of Dan Davin, OUP's Academic Publisher. He charts one man's growth against the background of war and the literary-intellectual milieu of post-war London and Oxford. A New Zealander, Davin originally came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. During the Second World War he fought in Crete, and, later, wrote the campaign's official history. As a novelist he befriended contemporary writers such as Louis MacNeice, and Joyce Cary among others. In this fascinating biography Davin emerges as a man with a complex public and private life, beset in later life by depression and alcoholism.
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Withdrawal-Writer-Soldier-Publisher/dp/0192123351/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(Philip Leroux, an Oxford philosophy don, has just complet...)
Philip Leroux, an Oxford philosophy don, has just completed a major work of scholarship - the biography of the nineteenth-century Russian emigre thinker Alexander Herzen. Almost simultaneously, Moser, his college colleague, a molecular biologist and natural philosopher, is found to have died, perhaps by his own hand.
https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Sorrow-Keith-Ovenden/dp/0241139775/?tag=2022091-20
1998
biographer novelist politician writer
Keith William Ovenden was born on August 6, 1943, in London, England, to Alfred William and Dorothy Naomi (Wright) Ovenden.
In 1966, Ovenden received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Keele in England. In 1967, he received a Master of Arts from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1971.
Ovenden lectured in the department of government at the University of Essex, England, from 1969 to 1974, and was a senior lecturer in the department of political science at Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, from 1975 to 1981. During these years, Ovenden wrote The Politics of Steel, a volume in the series “Studies in Policy Making” edited by Anthony King. The Politics of Steel was generally well-received.
Ivor Shelley and Sally Horton listed it in British Book News as a “useful contribution” to the subject. The Economist' s reviewer admired its lucid and vivid prose, and considered the book “a major contribution to the understanding of British politics,” though the reviewer pointed out that sometimes Ovenden’s “pro-nationalist sympathies carry him too far,” causing him to minimize evidence of financial and organizational carelessness among industry managers. Though the critic also observed that Ovenden’s political approach was not always sufficient for an economic subject, he emphasized that even the book’s defects are important to the study of policy making in Britain.
Following the publication of The Politics of Steel, Ovenden left New Zealand to work as a freelance writer in Paris from 1981 to 1985. In 1984, his second book, Ratatui, was published. Ovenden returned to New Zealand in 1986 to work as a freelance political and financial analyst in Wellington. He served on that city’s Electricity Corporation from 1986 to 1989, and served in the Ministry of External Relations and Trade from 1988 to 1989. In 1989, Ovenden was named Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and was selected to serve in the United Nations. That same year, he began working as an analyst in Washington, D.C. His third book, O.E., appeared in 1986 and his fourth book, Apartheid and International Finance: A Program for Change, co-authored with Tony Cole, was published in 1989.
Later in his career, Ovenden shifted away from overt political topics to focus more on biography. A Fighting Withdrawal, which appeared in 1996, explored the life of New Zealand literary figure Dan Davin (1913-90).
(Philip Leroux, an Oxford philosophy don, has just complet...)
1998(Ovenden draws on public and private papers to paint a com...)
1996On October 28, 1971, Ovenden married Helen Sutch. They have two children: Piers and Crispin.