OBITUARIES: Kenneth Gay

Kenneth Gay was for 30 years the secretary of the writer Robert Graves and his invaluable friend and collaborator.

As well as typing for Graves, he checked references, read proofs, and helped him with letters to publishers and literary agents. Above all, he gave of his editorial acumen. He insisted on the highest standards - however many drafts were required. Graves's large production would have been impossible without Gay's help. He was the dedicatee of two of Graves's books, The Long Week-End (co-written with Alan Hodge, 1940), sub-titled "a social history of Great Britain 1918-1939", and The Anger of Achilles (1959), Graves's translation of The Iliad of which the dedication reads: "To Kenneth Gay in gratitude for twenty-five years of patient critical help".

He was born Karl Goldschmidt in Germany, in 1912. He trained as a graphic artist but left his native country in 1933 on Hitler's rise to power. 1934 found him in Dey, Majorca, where the poets Robert Graves and Laura Riding befriended the intelligent young man. He learnt English (reading Defoe) and was soon helping with their Seizin Press and their typing, and wrote amusingly in Focus, their magazine.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, all three left Majorca on a Royal Navy destroyer. Graves persuaded the ship's captain not to transfer Goldschmidt to a German ship, and back to Germany, conscious of the fate that would, as a Jew, await him. In England Goldschmidt obtained leave to stay and work and, when the Second World War broke out, he gallantly served first in the Pioneer Corps, and later in the Royal Navy. In the Pioneers - as a protection in case of capture - he had been made to change his name. He became known (though he was always called Karl by his friends) as Kenneth Gay. When the war was over, he was granted full British citizenship.

After Robert Graves's break with Laura Riding, and whenever his wartime commitments allowed him, Gay had continued working with Graves. In 1947, shortly after Graves returned to Majorca, Karl and his wife Irene joined him there. The Dey villagers were glad to have another of the pre-war residents among them again.

When Graves's health declined and he was no longer able to write at the same rate, Karl Gay in 1965 secured a position in the University Libraries of the State University of New York at Buffalo, the repository of many of Graves's manuscripts. Later he became the curator of the Twentieth Century Poetry Collection.

On retirement he returned to Majorca, and lived in Palma, Dey having lost its attraction for him. There, with his phenomenal memory for detail, he became an essential port of call to all biographers and writers interested in the period.

William Graves

Karl Goldschmidt (Kenneth Charles Gay), secretary and librarian: born Elbefeld, Germany 12 February 1912; married Irene Parker (two daughters); died Palma, Majorca 26 March 1995.