Ted Hughes

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