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Lead book review

An unauthorised, and unconvincing, biography of Ted Hughes

Jonathan Bate fails to make his sensational case that the poet was a sexual sadist

3 October 2015

8:00 AM

3 October 2015

8:00 AM

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life Jonathan Bate

William Collins, pp.662, £30, ISBN: 9780008118228

In Testaments Betrayed, Milan Kundera says: ‘Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal’s or Faulkner’s.’ In The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm says: ‘The transgressive nature of biography is rarely acknowledged, but it is the only explanation for biography’s status as a popular genre.’

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £25 Tel: 08430 600033. Craig Raine’s latest book is More Dynamite, a collection of essays and reviews. His most recent poetry collection is How Snow Falls.

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