Things Worth Remembering: The Doomed Romance of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

Hughes said nothing of his wife’s suicide for decades, until his own final years when he penned the words: ‘Everything in me loved her.’ DOUGLAS MURRAY Welcome back to Douglas Murray’s Sunday column, Things Worth Remembering, where he presents passages from great poets he has committed to memory—and explains why you should, too. It’s hard to explain the aura that surrounded the poet Ted Hughes. He was the genius behind collections like Crow and The Hawk in the Rain, and he was poet laureate of England and a frequent fly-fishing companion of the Queen Mother. But there was also a terrible penumbra about him because of something that had happened that Hughes never talked about: his former wife and fellow poet Sylvia Plath had gassed herself in London in 1963 while the couple’s two children slept next door. Once was horrific enough. But then it happened again. ... © 2024 Bari Weiss 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104