February 16, 1992

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,  George MacBeth, (January 19, 1932 to February 16 1992) was " one of Britain's most important post-war poets." The article elaborates on his significance (and as always we may rearrange the formatting for our different purposes) :

....received a scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he read classics and philosophy, gaining a first-class degree in 1955....On leaving Oxford he joined the BBC as a producer in the Overseas Talks department and for the next twenty-two years worked as a BBC radio producer on programmes such as Poets' Voice, New Comment, and Poetry Now. ....His exceedingly eclectic tastes and superb editorial judgement resulted in his programmes not only broadcasting the best and latest work of the established poets but also a considerable body of poetry from unknown, up-and-coming writers. Furthermore, all programme contributors read their own work, a new departure for the BBC which had previously relied predominantly upon actors. ....He abhorred literary cliques and prophesied, accurately, that they would eventually stem the nation's poetic tide that was running hard during the 1960s and 1970s.

... his comic poems, such as ...‘Pavan for an Unborn Infanta’, a poem lamenting the inability of two London Zoo pandas successfully to mate, were not only hilarious but often trenchant.

In 1975 MacBeth's marriage [of 20 years, to Elizabeth Robson, a geneticist of some renown] was dissolved. In that same year, a watershed in MacBeth's life, he quit the BBC to make his living by his pen and published his first novel, The Transformation. His prose was never as popular as his poetry. Each novel—he wrote nine in all—was utterly unlike the last: several were erotic to the point of the pornographic, and all seemed somehow self-indulgent. Only one, Anna's Book (1983), received critical acclaim.
....
MacBeth was tall and always extremely thin, moustachioed, bespectacled and eccentric, especially in his dress; he once shocked the then staid BBC hierarchy by coming to work wearing a cream leather suit. Unconceited, generous, and always good-humoured, he never played the part of the poet. He was too busy living a life that included owning a run-down Ferrari (to which he wrote a funeral ode), collecting samurai swords, and buying Edwardian furniture for the vast, semi-derelict houses he revelled in owning.

.... His anthology, The Book of Cats (1976)—MacBeth was an enthusiast for cats—remained in print for over twenty-five years...