Vernon Watkins is a largely forgotten poet. Ironically, his long association with Faber & Faber led to some critics accusing him of being over-published. Unlike his friend and contemporary, Dylan Thomas, he never produced a single stellar poem or a piece attractive enough to garner persistent popular attention and praise. Nonetheless, Thomas described Watkins as “the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English”. His editor, TS Eliot, sent several notes of commendation revealing Watkins’s artistic stature in the eyes of his most revered contemporaries.  Watkins was also an “early encourager” of Philip Larkin and an authority on Yeats, Wordsworth and Thomas. Watkins lived a professional poetic life, reserving at least two hours in the evening for composition. Highly capable, he was employed as a cryptographer at Bletchley Park, where he met his wife. Not long before he died in 1967, he was tipped to receive the laureateship. Had he lived a while longer, he may have reached the summits of fame that his friend Dylan Thomas achieved.