Keith Castellain Douglas was born in England on January 24, 1920. He fought in the WWII, and most of his famous poems are mainly about the war.

One of the foremost English poets of the Second World War, he is remembered for poems describing his experiences as a tank commander in North Africa. his style is detached, devoid of emotional involvement and patriotic rhetoric. Despite or maybe because of this his understated poems have great impact. Largely unknown at the time of his death, Douglas’s poetry has been praised by prominent English poets and critics, for example Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill and Desmond Graham, for building on the achievement of WWI soldier-poets Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg.

Born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, he spent much of his childhood at boarding school because of the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He began writing poetry while a teenager, publishing his first poem at age 16.

With the advent of war in Europe in 1939, Douglas volunteered assigned to a tank regiment in North Africa and assumed command of a tank troop at the beginning of the El Alamein offensive in October 1942. He was wounded at Tripoli and during his recovery wrote some of his most famous poems. In June 1944 he sailed with the invasion fleet for Normandy, where he was killed three days after landing.

Douglas’s poetry developed through stages, the first comprising adolescent work, the second coinciding with his studies at Oxford, and the last beginning with his military service. A possible fourth stage can be related to a fragmented collection known as Bete Noire, written just before his death. His early work is marked by technical skill, but latterly he developed a characteristic spare, melancholy style.

Douglas believed his military service and battle experience would feed into and enhance his poetry-writing skills. His early rhythmic and lyrical style was replaced by understatement and juxtaposition for emotional effect.

Unlike WW1 war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Douglas avoided moral judgment, but used ironic detachment for impact. By the time his Collected Poems of Keith Douglas was published in 1951, interest in war poets had waned. However, his unsentimental battle poetry was seen as part of an a trend away from lyricism, though his style has been criticised as insensitive and cold-blooded.

Douglas was killed in the Invasion of Normandy on June 9, 1944 at the age of 24.