Michael Ffinch on 14 Sep, aged 65, of cancer. Born in Kent, he spent much of his boyhood in Suffolk. Educated at Repton he did his National Service as a subaltern with The Royal Norfolk Regiment, serving in Hong Kong. His experience left him with a strong affection for the Norfolks and a repertoire of robust army ballads. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and was tutored for a time by WH Auden, who recognised Ffinch's talents as a poet. A flamboyant figure even for the 1960s in that little Bohemia which flourished in Hampstead, he wrote verses and recited them, frequently in pubs. It was a precarious existence and he once ruefully wrote of surviving in fish fingers and tinned tomatoes - a diet he shared with his flatmate, the composer Francis Shaw. Michael was a genial and witty companion who valued the spoken word as highly as the written and was a master of both. A poet, librettist, broadcaster and teacher and in later life Michael was a biographer, producing lives of Gilbert and Sullivan, GK Chesterton and Cardinal Newman. He ran a Prep School in Kent and taught at a London Comprehensive, Casterton and Sedburgh. His eclectic scholarship won respect and his eccentricity of dress and manner delighted pupils if not all of his colleagues.
He embraced Roman Catholicism and his faith was profound, passionate and enlightened. It gave him the interior stamina to endure adversity and misfortune and enhanced his natural generosity of spirit. His GK Chesterton (1986) was short-listed for the Whitbread prize. Michael felt an affinity for his subject, who was also sustained by faith. Both believed that "beer is best" although Michael would advance a good case for claret and port as lubricants of wit and imagination.
Michael was first married to Patricia Major, but that ended in divorce. He then married Patricia Kelly, who died a year ago. He is survived by two sons from his first marriage and a son and a daughter from his second.   Adapted by JLR from The Times 28 Sep 99