Book review:  Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life

ANY poetry-lover who encountered Ted Hughes at the Listowel Writers Week in the 1980s is unlikely to forget this Yorkshire-man’s overwhelming presence. 

His massive, handsome frame filled the doorway of the bar at the Listowel Arms Hotel, turning all heads and silencing the midday drinkers.

He was a giant of a man with a voice that could topple the side-wall of a cottage, and with lips that scattered words like shrapnel across the battlefield of his life.