Michael Thwaites' outstanding contributions to literature, combined with public service and commitment to the College have earned him Trinity's highest honour. Michael Thwaites entered Trinity from Geelong Grammar in 1934. As an undergraduate he represented the College in athletics and football, served on the TCAC Committee, and edited Fleur-de-Lys. He was sprint champion of the University in 1936. After graduating from the University of Melbourne with first class honours in Classics, he was elected as Victorian Rhodes Scholar for 1937. During his studies in Oxford, Thwaites was awarded the Newdigate Prize for his poem Milton Blind.

He met his future wife Honor Mary Good while she was a student at Janet Clarke Hall, and they began a rich conversation and relationship that continued until Honor's death in 1993. They were married in Oxford in December 1939. To help in the fight against Hitler, Thwaites enlisted in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. A vivid account of his experiences as second-in-command of the converted whaler Wastwater is given in his Atlantic Odyssey (1999). During his time at sea he learned that he had been awarded the King's Medal for Poetry, the first Australian to be so honoured. He subsequently published a volume including his best known poem The Jervis Bay.

On returning to Australia after the War, Thwaites became a Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne.

In 1950, he was appointed to ASIO as Director of Counter-Espionage. In April 1954 his branch supervised the sensational defection of the KGB officers Vladimir and Eudokia Petrov. He has written of this in his 1980 book Truth Will Out - ASIO and the Petrovs. He was director of several other branches before resigning from ASIO in 1971.

For the next five years (1971-1976) he was Deputy Head of the Federal Parliamentary Library in Canberra. During all this time, and then in retirement, he continued to be active in the Moral Rearmament movement and to write poetry of distinction. His published collections include The Jervis Bay and Other Poems (1943), Poems of War and Peace (1968), and The Honeyman and Other Poems (1989). With Penelope Thwaites, his distinguished pianist daughter, he has given in recent years a number of recitals of poetry and music, including two in Trinity.