Dan Davin (1913–1990)  Daniel Marcus Davin was born in 1913 in Invercargill into a working class Irish-Catholic family, the fourth of six children. His early education was in Gore, where his father was a labourer and then guard on the railway, before the family moved back to Invercargill.

His schooling was initially at St Mary's Convent School in Gore, before attending Invercargill's Marist Brothers' School from 1921–29. He excelled academically and was the top Southland student in the Public Service Examination in 1928 and top in Southland in Matriculation in 1929 with distinction in English, French and Latin. He was both Captain and Dux of the the school. He won a scholarship to attend Sacred Heart College in Auckland in 1930, and from here won a University National Scholarship to attend University of Otago in 1931, studying English, French and Latin.

In 1935 Davin won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University and graduated with first-class honours in 1939. His friendship with fellow Southlander, Winnie Gonley, started in Davin's early days at Otago University and they married when he finished at Oxford. Gonley was a fine scholar, a talented poet, and short story writer.

War intervened in Davin's career, and he was a platoon commander in the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Crete in World War II. He also served on Freyberg's intelligence staff in North Africa and as a corps commander at Cassino. He was awarded a military MBE.

After the war Davin's rise through the ranks of Oxford University Press culminated in the role of Academic Publisher, a position he held for over 30 years. During this time he supported the careers of young New Zealand writers and New Zealand writing and his hospitality was renowned. Among his friends of the time were writers Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNiece and Joyce Cary.

He published seven novels with universal themes, often involving New Zealanders, as well as collections of short stories, a volume of war history and literary critiques. Roads from Home (1949) is his best known and most widely appreciated novel in his own country. The novel was set in Southland in the 1930s.

He retired in 1972, was awarded an Otago University honorary doctorate in 1984 and a CBE in 1987. He died in 1990.

This extraordinary Southlander is remembered as a scholar, writer, soldier, historian, editor, critic and publisher.

Davin, as a writer, wrote of a mostly Protestant Invercargill in the 1920s from the perspective of the working-class Irish-Catholic subculture.

Keith Ovenden's A Fighting Withdrawal, is the most recent biography of Davin's life. Intimate Stranger, a collection of Davin reminiscences was published in 2000 and edited by academic, Janet Wilson.