Oliver Duff

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 520, 10 June 1949, Page 5

Oliver Duff

TRIBUTE to Oliver Duff, A who has now retired from the editorship of The Listener, would be out of place if it were not also an appraisal of the man and his work. Mr. Duff has shown many times in this column that men and ideas can be examined candidly without offending against truth or good manners, and although he would have preferred to slip unobtrusively into retirement, he is the last person to claim immunity for himself. We are grateful to Mr. E. H. McCormick for supplying a tribute in what may be described as the Duff tradition. It does not tell the full story; there is much else which, like the anecdotes Mr. Duff reserved for his friends, is not for publication. But that is true of all men, and few of them have a richness of personality which can overflow once a week into a column of good writing. It is a short column; but concise writing is always the hardest, and in his best vein Mr. Duff has been able to say a great deal in three hundred words. There is, of course, much more to him than a talent for saying what he thinks in clear and economical prose. The leading article became the sharp edge of a mind which elsewhere in the journal was a_ sustaining and directing influence. Behind the growth of The Listener can be traced a mature development of character. "Mature" is the proper word, for Mr. Duff's friends know that the final phase has not yet been reached. They look for writing which can be done, without restraint, in the full range of interest outlined in New Zealand Now. His achievement in journalism was to. do something new in this country, and to do it so well that those who follow him must aim at standards which seem alarmingly high. Yet a creative task does not come suddenly to an end. We shall be thankful to draw upon the reserves of vitality which The Listener has acquired from an expansive and robust personality.