Ted Hughes
Bloodbath at West Chapple farm
Fifty years after its original publication, John Cornwell’s account of the Devon murder mystery involving three dysfunctional siblings remains as haunting as ever
What makes a good title?
Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles – ‘Wild Chase’; ‘Dreams of Love’ – whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth…
Pretending to be himself
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…
Burning passions
This is a book which, as one eyes its lavish illustrations and dips into its elegant prose, looks as if…
Poet as predator
Craig Raine says that Jonathan Bate’s unauthorised biography of Ted Hughes gets it wrong on every level
The voice of Crow
A dead parent, the interrogation of a literary inheritance, and over everything, a bird: Max Porter is apparently unafraid to…
Low life
Rachel Johnson, in last week’s Spectator diary, says that her husband says she only writes a book in order to…
Evolutionary road
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus…
Glad to be Grey
Great works of art may have a strange afterlife. Deracinated from the world that created them they are at the…
Low life
I’m rubbish at public speaking and detest it. Even the thought of reciting an English poem of my choice at…
Powerful pathos
The impersonator — Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan — speaks, in different voices, to a single primitive pleasure centre in his…
Garlands of repose
It is a truism that writers of all kinds often find inspiration and solace in their gardens, as well as…
