""I did not want to be editor of the Listener." says the author. This was his reaction when, in 1948, he was offered the editorship. Reluctance overcome, Mr Holcroft came north to Wellington from the editorial chair of the Southland Times, retiring in 1967 after eighteen years of Listener service. They earned him an enduring reputation for adventurous and discriminating literary leadership; a devoted audience for his own editorial essays; a name for a firm no-compromise policy against outside interference with the paper; and a host of living friendships with the New Zealand writers, critics, and artists of the 1950s and 1960s. ..."--Book jacket.