Thomas 'Tony' Riddell was a lifelong friend of Australian poet Gwen Harwood (nee Foster). Letters written by her to him from Brisbane in 1943, when he was stationed as a soldier in Darwin, were published in 1990 as Blessed City : The Letters of Gwen Harwood to Thomas Riddell, January to September 1943. Harwood continued to write to Tony Riddell until her death in 1995. All but the last of her volumes of poetry are dedicated to him. Riddell kept every letter and postcard Harwood wrote to him. Much of their correspondence was published in Greg Kratzmann’s A Steady Storm of Correspondence: selected letters of Gwen Harwood, 1943-1995 (UQP, 2001).

Gwen Harwood is one of Australia's best-known poets. She was born in Brisbane in 1920 and lived there until her marriage in 1945, when she moved to Hobart, Tasmania. Harwood's poetry and critical writing appeared regularly in Australian literary journals from the 1960s. She published eight books of poetry. In 1989 she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for services to literature. She wrote under the names of Francis Geyer, Walter Lehmann, Miriam Stone and T.F. Kline. She died in 1995.