Kildare Dobbs was born in India in October 1923, raised in Ireland, and educated in Dublin, Cambridge and London. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II and in East Africa, before migrating to Canada in 1952. There he earned a living in journalism and publishing, wrote Running to Paradise (1962), ‘autobiography honoured as fiction’ that won a Governor General’s Award, concocted The Great Fur Opera (1970), a subversive vision of Canadian history, with the artist Ronald Searle, and broadcast regularly on CBC radio and television. The Eleventh Hour (1997) was his first volume of poetry. He is recipient of the Canadian National Magazine Award and in 2000 was invested with the Order of Ontario, and made writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto in 2002.