Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney’s letters confirm that he really was as nice as he seemed
Seamus Heaney’s letters are full of energy and joie de vivre, but a darker note persists as the pressure of celebrity grows, says Roy Foster
Pie in the sky
Frieda Hughes adopts an unfledged orphan bird, regarding him as ‘a magical creature’ – but few others find him so engaging
The Yorkshire town that’s gone from dirty old buildings to New Age nirvana
Bernard Ingham once told a story about a reporter from the Financial Times who went to cover an election in…
‘Ted is liar. Ted beats me up. Ted wishes me dead’: Sylvia Plath descends into madness and misery
In 1923, a Frenchman, Emile Coué, persuaded millions of Americans to finger a piece of string with exactly 20 knots.…
Who is Sylvia – what is she?
In May 1956, three months after meeting Ted Hughes, one before they will marry, Sylvia Plath writes to her mother…
How The Satanic Verses failed to burn
This is a book which, as one eyes its lavish illustrations and dips into its elegant prose, looks as if…
An unauthorised, and unconvincing, biography of Ted Hughes
Craig Raine says that Jonathan Bate’s unauthorised biography of Ted Hughes gets it wrong on every level
In Crow’s dark shadow
A dead parent, the interrogation of a literary inheritance, and over everything, a bird: Max Porter is apparently unafraid to…
Praise, insults, posh gin – and other perils of the book launch
Rachel Johnson, in last week’s Spectator diary, says that her husband says she only writes a book in order to…
I fear for this year’s Proms
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus…
There’s nothing wrong with getting into Thomas Tallis on the back of Fifty Shades of Grey
Great works of art may have a strange afterlife. Deracinated from the world that created them they are at the…
The risks of being an Englishman on Burns Night
I’m rubbish at public speaking and detest it. Even the thought of reciting an English poem of my choice at…
Seamus Heaney: no shuffling or cutting — just turning over aces
The impersonator — Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan — speaks, in different voices, to a single primitive pleasure centre in his…
Behind (almost) every great writer is a great garden
It is a truism that writers of all kinds often find inspiration and solace in their gardens, as well as…
