Books
Letters of Ted Hughes – ed. Christopher Reid/Faber
Finally! Moving, passionate, angry, funny, striking, brilliant and beautiful beyond belief, the collected letters of one of our greatest poets have now taken pride of place on my bedside table, and may, I suspect, be a permanent addition to the pile. They are extraordinary. For too long Hughes – who is also revealed here as an impassioned pioneer of the environmentalist movement – has suffered under the prying, accusatory eyes of those who would blame him for the successive suicides of Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill; a prime example of what happens when biographical speculation gets in the way of objective appreciation of artistic genius. Not that this collection, magnificently edited by Christopher Reid, shies away from that tragic period of Hughes’ life. ‘I was the only person who could have helped her’, he writes bleakly, of Plath, to his sister, ‘and the only person so jaded by her states and demands that I could not recognise when she really needed it.’ Highly recommended.
I am also enjoying: Three Victories and a Defeat – Brendan Simms/Allen Lane, a fascinating look at the uneasy historical relationship between Britain and Europe; Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain – Oliver Sacks, Picador, which tackles a subject I am personally obsessed by, i.e. what happens to human brains when they process music; The Triumph of the Political Class – Peter Oborne, Simon & Schuster, which argues that the age of mass participatory democracy anchored in political parties is beyond us, having being replaced by an all-powerful ‘political class’. I’m not sure I entirely agree with him, but I’m loving the argument! I’ve also just picked up the paperback edition of Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Extraordinary Adventures of the Man Behind Mozart – Rodney Bolt/Bloomsbury because it deals with another obsession of mine, Mozart opera!
Theatre
If you can get in, I urge you to go and see the revival of Patrick Marber’s debut play Dealer’s Choice, directed by Samuel West at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
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