Ted Hughes, available in the shop now.
The private lives of writers are endlessly fascinating (and often morbidly so, as in the case of Mr Hughes here). But what big, weighty biographies often don’t deliver is the texture of the daily lives of their subjects. It’s always ‘she worked on this book, then it was published’ and ‘he went on this tour, had an affair with this person, then wrote this book’ and so on. But where’s the grit, where’s the gristle? I want to know what his favourite sandwich was. I want to know how he got on with the people in his local post office. I want to know what toilet paper he used to wipe his arse (and how did he choose the brand?). I want to know what he was watching on TV on a wet Thursday in March 1993. Despite all the utter brilliance of ‘Hawk in the Rain’, ‘Crow’ etc., I want to know that he was still human like the rest of us!
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