Keen first appeared in the cult 1940s radio serial Dossier on Demetrius. The 104, 12-minute episodes are still available. The show The 104, 12-minute episodes are still available. + Adventures of Major Keen is a thinking man's (or woman's) old time radio spy and espionage drama. Coming from Australia, this old time radio great from the late 1940s early 1950s, chronicled Major K. Quiz Answers! Jack Davey & Bob Dyer (you may think of others as well!) 3. Lux Soap (Lux Radio Theatre), Caltex (Caltex Theatre). Library of the Air and Max Afford's serial Hagen's Circus. Three very successful suspense serials Dossier on Dumetrius. Of the radio transcription discs. How can the answer be improved? Dossier on Dumetrius was one of Grace Gibson’s best-loved and most. Dossier on Dumetrius was probably the best and most successful radio serial ever.

The cult 1940s radio series, Dossier on Demetrius, set around postwar London, focused on 'Major Gregory Keen of MI5' and his battles with the plots of nefarious Nazi villains. Yet the show was not, unlike the BBC series Dick Barton: Special Agent, big in Britain. The reason was that it was made in Sydney, and broadcast across Australasia. Its star, as Major Keen, was Bruce Stewart, who has died, aged 80.

Like many young artists at the time, Stewart became part of the postwar Australasian diaspora. In 1954, just after the Queen's coronation, he came to Britain from New Zealand. His arrival coincided with the beginning of British television's long boom, and came just before the birth of ITV. So Stewart found his first employment as an actor in the new medium. By the early 1960s he was moving towards writing; in 1962, he won the Silver Dagger award of the Mystery Writers of America for his play, Shadow of a Pale Horse.

Stewart went on to write more than 200 plays and scripts for radio, television and the stage. He had one play put on in the West End of London, at the Duchess Theatre in 1970. This was The Hallelujah Boy - with Alan Dobie in the title role - and it focused on worker priests in France. But Stewart was a versatile writer, who also tackled science fiction. His work included the children's television series Timeslip (1972) and a horror film, The Hand of Night (1966), a 'vampire film without blood'. He also contributed many episodes to The Onedin Line, Secret Army and Sherlock Holmes.

Stewart had been born in New Zealand of Irish and Catholic stock, a background that inspired many of his works. These often examined religious spirituality and the colonial heritage of New Zealand and Australia almost equally. Educated at Mount Albert grammar school in Auckland, he trained for three years with the Marist Brothers in northern New Zealand. His ambition was to become a priest, but he realised he did not have the vocation.

So he fell back on his second great love, beginning his career as an entertainer in wartime concert parties across the Pacific. He became an actor in Sydney, working in theatre and on the then dominant medium of radio. Out of this came his star part in Dossier on Deme- trius. The series was so popular in his homeland that the New Zealand parliament apparently rose early to allow members to hear the final episode.

In his later career as co-chairman of the Writers' Guild, Stewart steered it away from what he considered extreme political tendencies. Back on TV, he featured in Bodyline (1984), an Australian mini-series. A devout but questioning Catholic, he produced work that challenged doctrinal assumptions; his last play, for Radio 4, Soeur Sourire, about the 1960s Singing Nun, questioned the church's stance on suicide.

He is survived by his wife Helen, whom he met while working in the theatre, and their six children.

Dossier On Demetrius

Dossier On Dmitri

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