include work by Sappho, Horace, Catullus, Hafiz, Verlaine and Giacomo Leopardi. He was a central figure in British poetry in the early 1950s, editing, for example, the poetry anthology Images of Tomorrow (1953) and with David Wright the Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse. He was elected to the RSL in 1954, awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1973, and appointed OBE in 1989. Although diagnosed with glaucoma at the age of 18, a condition he inherited from his father, he was able to read with his left eye until 1961, but was completely blind from 1978. Nonetheless, he continued to write almost to the end. A documentary film about him, entitled Ibycus: A Poem by John Heath-Stubbs, was made by the Chilean director Carlos Klein in 1997. John Heath-Stubbs died in London on 26 December 2006, aged 88. Writing style As a Romantic poet, Heath-Stubbs's diction was strong, yet subtle. Running through his work was a nostalgia for "classicism". He was consciously literary and his work elaborately wrought rather than spontaneous, which meant his was not the kind of poetry likely to have mass appeal. However, his devotion to the craft of poetry makes his work impressive. As Edward Lucie-Smith put it, "Few writers of his time had a deeper knowledge of the English language, or cared for it more devotedly." Poetry collections {{columns-list|colwidth=20em| 1942: Wounded Thammuz 1943: Beauty and the Beast 1946: The Divided Ways 1946: Poems from Giacomo Leopardi 1948: The Swarming of the Bees 1948: Jonathan Swift: A Selection of Poems 1948: Selected Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson 1948: Percy Bysshe Shelley- Poems 1949: The Charity of the Stars 1950: The Forsaken Garden: An Anthology of Poetry 1824–1909, edited with David Wright 1950: The Darkling Plain: Romanticism in English Poetry from Darley to Yeats 1950: Mountains Beneath the Horizon (ed.) poems by William Bell 1951: Aphrodite's Garland - Five Ancient Love Poems 1953: New Poems 1953: Images of Tomorrow: an Anthology of Recent Poetry 1953: Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse, edited with David Wright 1954: A Charm Against the Toothache 1955: Charles Williams: Writers and Their Work No. 63 1958: The Triumph of the Muse and Other Poems 1958: Helen in Egypt and Other Plays 1962: The Blue-Fly in His Head 1965: Selected Poems 1969: Cosmic Poem 1972: Penguin Modern Poets 20, co editor 1974: Artorius: A Heroic Poem in Four Books and