Ted Hughes - The Unauthorised Life

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE-Gripping and at times ineffably sad, this book would be poetic even without the poetry. It will be the standard biography of Ted Hughes for a long time to come- Sunday Times-Seldom has the life of a writer rattled along with such furious activity - A moving, fascinating biography- The TimesTed Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He is one of Britain-s most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and Crow. Event and animal are turned to myth in his work. Yet he is also a poet of deep tenderness, of restorative memory steeped in the English literary tradition. A poet of motion and force, of rivers, light and redemption, of beasts in brooding landscapes.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet who has lived, he was also a prolific children-s writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John Keats. With his magnetic p