Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Unseen papers reveal Ted Hughes's 'funny, loyal and affectionate' side


Extensive correspondence, due to be auctioned later this month, shows a humorous, tender man - very different from the popular image of the late poet laureate



Ted Hughes and Roy Davids
Fast friendship ... Ted Hughes and Roy Davids. Photograph: PR/Bonhams

Penning a teasing poem for an old friend who was turning 50 and promising jovially that he has no plans to “ease off” on his own writing, an affectionate and generous side of the notoriously private Ted Hughes has been revealed in an extensive collection of previously unpublished writings from the late poet laureate.

The archive was put together by Hughes’s friend and manuscript adviser Roy Davids, who first met the poet in 1979. Davids had been asked to mastermind the sale of Hughes’s late wife Sylvia Plath’s literary archive for Sotheby’s. They would go on to become close friends, with the collection showing Hughes giving Davids writing advice, and laying out his thoughts on everything from the controversial publication of Plath’s journals to the state of his own career.
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