My own interest in Hughes isn’t just his extraordinarily powerful nature poetry, but in our shared experience. He would finally break his 35 year silence by publishing a brilliant collection of poems dedicated to her entitled Birthday Letters.in January of 1998.

Ted Hughes was indicted by Plath’s post-humous acolytes for her tragic death, and, as the book goes on to explain, he was pilloried, heckled and spat at while maintaining a stoic silence on the whole sad subject. The couple had parted but not divorced just months before. Her tragically life ended while the couple’s two children slept down the hall. Sylvia Plath was famously described as the Marilyn Monroe of modern literature – a post-war confessional poet who become a heroine and martyr of the feminist movement in the aftermath of her suicide in 1963. Sylvia Plath – a dour and distant Heathcliff to Sylvia’s passionate Cathy. The book promises the full story of Hughes’ life “as it was lived”, which means that this extraordinary giant of British poetry and literature might step out from behind his mythology at last. When Ted Hughes, An Unauthorized Life by Sir Jonathan Bate arrived in the local library I picked it up the moment that it hit the shelves. Living as I do in the United States, many miles from the West Yorkshire village where I was born, I’ve found I’m a sucker for British biographies – especially those featuring enigmatic northerners like Ted, here. Ted Hughes – The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate.

Ted hughes by jonathan bate