0:00:03 > 0:00:09This programme contains some strong language and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting
0:00:09 > 0:00:14"The head dragging forward, the body keeping up, the hind legs lagging,
0:00:14 > 0:00:17"he coils, he flourishes the blackjack tail
0:00:17 > 0:00:22"as if looking for a target, hurrying through the underworld soundless."
0:00:23 > 0:00:27I used to believe that the poem is simply the text
0:00:27 > 0:00:31and that all biographical information should be kept at bay.
0:00:31 > 0:00:33I don't believe it any more.
0:00:33 > 0:00:35I'm very interested in the whole package.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39I think that's what you got with Ted Hughes.
0:00:39 > 0:00:45"And I hold creation in my foot, or fly up and revolve it all slowly."
0:00:45 > 0:00:50The physicality of the poems seems connected very much with him
0:00:50 > 0:00:56as an individual, whose personality and magnetism were very important.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01He lived the work.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05He was poetic to the very core of his being.
0:01:05 > 0:01:09Poetry was my father's voice.
0:01:09 > 0:01:15Poetry was a means of transforming experience.
0:01:15 > 0:01:17He was extraordinarily striking.
0:01:17 > 0:01:21And the first person you thought of when you saw Ted Hughes was Heathcliff.
0:01:23 > 0:01:27He was a man who radiated artistic power.
0:01:27 > 0:01:32More controversy and scandal attaches to his name than that
0:01:32 > 0:01:36of any other figure in literature, with the exception of Lord Byron.
0:01:38 > 0:01:41One woman killing herself is pretty bad.
0:01:41 > 0:01:43Two women, one right after the other,
0:01:43 > 0:01:47killing themselves really makes you do a double take.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50That's the kind of thing that gets a feminist's attention.
0:01:51 > 0:01:53He was certainly formidable.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59And all these women had fallen into his grip and he's destroyed them but
0:01:59 > 0:02:04as soon as you look at the facts, it's not quite like that, is it?
0:02:04 > 0:02:09I feel that my parents have been often fictionalised,
0:02:09 > 0:02:12to the point where I no longer recognise them.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15It could be that the difficult circumstances that he faced
0:02:15 > 0:02:22were made worse by this unwavering sense that he was above all
0:02:22 > 0:02:24a poet, a poet before he was a man.
0:02:25 > 0:02:28"He was stronger than life.
0:02:28 > 0:02:30"Death.
0:02:30 > 0:02:34"But who is stronger than death? Me, evidently."
0:03:11 > 0:03:16The winner of the 1998 Whitbread Book of the Year...
0:03:18 > 0:03:20..is Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes.
0:03:20 > 0:03:22APPLAUSE
0:03:27 > 0:03:29'Frieda Hughes, the daughter of Ted Hughes
0:03:29 > 0:03:32'and Sylvia Plath was the public face of the winner,
0:03:32 > 0:03:35'Birthday Letters, at the awards ceremony, a book which poetically
0:03:35 > 0:03:39'details the troubled and destructive relationship of her parents.'
0:03:39 > 0:03:43I first found out about the Birthday Letters collection of poems
0:03:43 > 0:03:48when I came back to England in 1997, and he sent me this manuscript
0:03:48 > 0:03:52and he was very adamant I should read it right away.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56And he was very anxious, um,
0:03:56 > 0:03:58to know what I thought about it.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01It seemed so incongruous to be sitting there
0:04:01 > 0:04:05reading about my father's other world and his inner world
0:04:05 > 0:04:10and this relationship with my mother and his feelings for my mother.
0:04:10 > 0:04:13And there was a question, "Do you think I should publish it?"
0:04:13 > 0:04:16And I think my immediate reaction was,
0:04:16 > 0:04:20"Why on earth are you asking me if you should publish it?
0:04:20 > 0:04:22"You should ABSOLUTELY publish it."
0:04:22 > 0:04:24Nobody knew that they were coming.
0:04:24 > 0:04:28And then, one Saturday morning in January 1998,
0:04:28 > 0:04:30The Times was published,
0:04:30 > 0:04:32and there on the front page was the story,
0:04:32 > 0:04:37"Revealed - the most tragic literary love story of our time."
0:04:37 > 0:04:42There was a full two-page spread, with photos of Ted and Sylvia.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45The poet laureate had broken his decades of silence.
0:04:47 > 0:04:52Suddenly, they were out there, and they were all over the place.
0:04:52 > 0:04:55It was one of those few occasions in life
0:04:55 > 0:04:58when you would regularly see people reading
0:04:58 > 0:05:03a book of poems on the tube, on the bus or on the train, you know,
0:05:03 > 0:05:08the general public were reading a book of poems.
0:05:08 > 0:05:11You know, they were electrically charged, these poems.
0:05:11 > 0:05:15You'd been waiting to hear Ted's version
0:05:15 > 0:05:18of that part of his life for a long while.
0:05:18 > 0:05:23And suddenly, here it was, so it had the urgency of testimony.
0:05:23 > 0:05:28'Accepting the award, she read from a letter her father had written to a friend.'
0:05:28 > 0:05:33"How strange that we have to make these public declarations
0:05:33 > 0:05:35"of our secrets, but we do.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41"If only I had done the equivalent 30 years ago,
0:05:41 > 0:05:44"I might have had a more fruitful career.
0:05:44 > 0:05:48"Certainly, a freer psychological life."
0:05:48 > 0:05:54What was revelatory was that he had written them at all.
0:05:54 > 0:05:59The emotions and the thoughts behind some of them,
0:05:59 > 0:06:04he'd talked about during my childhood and my life.
0:06:04 > 0:06:07When I asked him had it just appeared, he said,
0:06:07 > 0:06:10"No, I've been working on this for years."
0:06:10 > 0:06:16My father was very specific about including
0:06:16 > 0:06:20the idea of my mother in the life of me and my brother.
0:06:20 > 0:06:25She was a very conscious presence, yes, which was rather lovely, actually.
0:06:29 > 0:06:32He was working on Birthday Letters for about 30 years.
0:06:32 > 0:06:38There's a notebook that clearly belongs to the late 1960s.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40There are literally hundreds of poems.
0:06:40 > 0:06:45Many of them were not included in the finished collection itself.
0:06:45 > 0:06:47Endless process of writing, rewriting,
0:06:47 > 0:06:51spending his whole life working on this project.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55Every single poem was constantly rewritten - one of them here,
0:06:55 > 0:06:58a lovely poem about how he and Sylvia picked daffodils.
0:06:58 > 0:07:02You can see how he starts writing it in manuscript,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05then he gets to the stage of typing it out.
0:07:05 > 0:07:09But even once he's typed it, he just goes over, again and again,
0:07:09 > 0:07:12all...scrawling lines out, adding words in -
0:07:12 > 0:07:16extraordinary process of constant revision.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19He begins the poem Remember How You Picked The Daffodils -
0:07:19 > 0:07:22"Nobody else remembers", he says, "but I do."
0:07:26 > 0:07:29And then it ends with an image of Sylvia dropping
0:07:29 > 0:07:33the daffodils as she stoops in the April rain
0:07:33 > 0:07:37and there's a sense of dropping them suggestive of a death,
0:07:37 > 0:07:41of dead flowers - traditionally we drop flowers in a grave.
0:07:47 > 0:07:52For 20 years, the spectre of Sylvia Plath was what he called
0:07:52 > 0:07:58the real thing, casting a shadow like a colossus across all his work.
0:07:59 > 0:08:04But the way in which he wrote about the real thing was a dilemma,
0:08:04 > 0:08:08a problem, something he wrestled with as an artist.
0:08:08 > 0:08:11When Ted Hughes began writing poetry,
0:08:11 > 0:08:15the confessional was not what good poetry was all about and the
0:08:15 > 0:08:20evolution to the more personal voice is the story of his poetic delight.
0:08:37 > 0:08:43This is Aspinall Street in Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47We're along a valley that runs out of Halifax
0:08:47 > 0:08:50and that is 1 Aspinall Street,
0:08:50 > 0:08:56where Ted lived till he was six or seven, so, you know, not particularly
0:08:56 > 0:09:03grand beginnings but left an incredible impression on Ted.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06If you were choosing, you might not think that this would be
0:09:06 > 0:09:12the most useful place for a poet laureate to grow up, but it was.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16He found everything that you needed in the beginning in and around here,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19in all the little nooks and crannies of these streets
0:09:19 > 0:09:22and, you know, down on the canal and in the woods
0:09:22 > 0:09:28and up on the tops there - animals, hunting, exploration, adventure,
0:09:28 > 0:09:32just a place for his imagination to catch fire and come alive.
0:09:32 > 0:09:37Scout Rock, which he talked about a lot
0:09:37 > 0:09:40and wrote about a lot is just behind that block of flats there.
0:09:40 > 0:09:45He used to say that his view to the south was blocked by that
0:09:45 > 0:09:46great slab of rock.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53"The most impressive early companion of my childhood was a dark cliff,
0:09:53 > 0:09:56"or what looked like a dark cliff to the south.
0:09:56 > 0:09:58"A wall of rock and steep woods halfway up the sky,
0:09:58 > 0:10:00"just cleared by the winter sun.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08"From my home near the bottom of the south-facing slope of the valley
0:10:08 > 0:10:12"that cliff was both the curtain and backdrop to existence.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15"If a man's death is held in place by a stone
0:10:15 > 0:10:18"my birth was fastened into place by that rock
0:10:18 > 0:10:21"and for my first seven years, it pressed its shape
0:10:21 > 0:10:23"in various moods, into my brain.
0:10:23 > 0:10:25"There was no easy way to escape it.
0:10:25 > 0:10:29"I lived under it, as under the presence of a war,
0:10:29 > 0:10:31"or an occupying army."
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Here would have been Mount Zion Chapel,
0:10:38 > 0:10:45another great, big slab of rock and religion, barring his view
0:10:45 > 0:10:50It was away up there on to the moor that he talked about
0:10:50 > 0:10:54a more gentle gradient, up towards the horizon
0:10:54 > 0:10:59where he could start seeing and thinking and breathing.
0:11:06 > 0:11:09He was a happy lad, Ted.
0:11:09 > 0:11:14Always laughing, always full of life, always happy to see me.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17I mean, I couldn't understand, really,
0:11:17 > 0:11:19looking back on it,
0:11:19 > 0:11:21understand, with the age difference,
0:11:21 > 0:11:25that he would have any time for a little girl.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28You know, the little cousin that kept popping up
0:11:28 > 0:11:30every now and then, into the house,
0:11:30 > 0:11:34and me being imposed on him, as it were.
0:11:34 > 0:11:36"Look after her."
0:11:37 > 0:11:43His brother, Gerald, taught him about trapping, hunting, fishing,
0:11:43 > 0:11:49how animals behaved, all the excitement out there in the world,
0:11:49 > 0:11:50on the moors.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55Introduced him to the animal kingdom, really.
0:11:57 > 0:12:01And made him very unsentimental about death, and killing.
0:12:01 > 0:12:03GUNSHOTS
0:12:07 > 0:12:10I suppose it's a countryman's feeling for animals,
0:12:10 > 0:12:14that they are, in some sense, there to provide for human beings.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19Nature was always just there, outside the front door.
0:12:19 > 0:12:23My father says, "And I'm going to teach you how to skin a badger."
0:12:23 > 0:12:26"Sit there." So I'd sit down, he says, "Right, here's the badger!"
0:12:26 > 0:12:29Puts the badger on my lap, so I've got a dead badger on my lap.
0:12:29 > 0:12:33He gives me a knife and says, "Now, this is how you do it."
0:12:33 > 0:12:36And he shows me how to skin a badger!
0:12:36 > 0:12:39So, um, I can skin a badger.
0:12:39 > 0:12:40It's not something...
0:12:40 > 0:12:45it's not a talent I'm going to show anybody, particularly!
0:12:49 > 0:12:52You mightn't think that these two interests,
0:12:52 > 0:12:55capturing animals and writing poems, have much in common.
0:12:55 > 0:12:59But the more I think back, the more sure I am that, with me,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02the two interests have been one interest.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05I think of poems as a sort of animal.
0:13:05 > 0:13:08They have their own life, like animals,
0:13:08 > 0:13:12by which I mean that they seem quite separate from any person,
0:13:12 > 0:13:14even from their author,
0:13:14 > 0:13:16and nothing can be added to them or taken away
0:13:16 > 0:13:20without maiming or perhaps even killing them.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24He started to see it from their point of view,
0:13:24 > 0:13:27and uses, I think, this really interesting phrase,
0:13:27 > 0:13:33"You have to turn yourself into it," turn yourself into that thing.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37But also, I think, he means you've got to give yourself up to it,
0:13:37 > 0:13:41almost as if you become the prey, hand yourself over to it,
0:13:41 > 0:13:44and allow it to become you.
0:13:47 > 0:13:51"Pike, three inches long, perfect
0:13:51 > 0:13:55"Pike in all parts Green tigering the gold
0:13:57 > 0:14:00"Killers from the egg The malevolent aged grin."
0:14:02 > 0:14:06He's actually associating with that living organism.
0:14:06 > 0:14:08And that's very different from
0:14:08 > 0:14:11the way that a lot of other people write about nature.
0:14:11 > 0:14:13If Larkin writes about a flower or an animal,
0:14:13 > 0:14:16he's probably looking at it through a window,
0:14:16 > 0:14:19from a train, you know, going at 60 miles an hour.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22That's not true with Hughes - it's face-to-face.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28"One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet
0:14:28 > 0:14:33"The outside eye stared as a vice locks
0:14:33 > 0:14:34"The same iron in this eye
0:14:34 > 0:14:37"Though its film shrank in death."
0:14:39 > 0:14:42They're full of conflict and violence, and the aggression
0:14:42 > 0:14:45of the natural world.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17When he got to Cambridge, of course, it was quite a surprise to him.
0:15:17 > 0:15:21He'd come from a very average sort of grammar school.
0:15:21 > 0:15:25I had the impression that we were there in a rare period,
0:15:25 > 0:15:29where it was felt to be OK, somehow,
0:15:29 > 0:15:33to have come from a provincial background
0:15:33 > 0:15:36in this rather odd, unprivileged way.
0:15:40 > 0:15:42When he spoke, he was listened to.
0:15:42 > 0:15:44He had a presence even then
0:15:44 > 0:15:47and whatever Ted said was regarded
0:15:47 > 0:15:49as something worth waiting for,
0:15:49 > 0:15:53even though it might be a bit unexpected or bizarre.
0:15:53 > 0:15:57He was never invisible in a room
0:15:57 > 0:16:00and he was always a kind of leader figure.
0:16:00 > 0:16:02People came and came to his room,
0:16:02 > 0:16:05in part, because he did this extraordinary thing
0:16:05 > 0:16:07of roasting meat over...
0:16:09 > 0:16:12..whatever fire they had provided in the room.
0:16:12 > 0:16:16And so people came in to see what was going on and to enjoy it.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20There was never any doubt in their minds that he was the best poet.
0:16:20 > 0:16:26You know, they were quite sure that Ted was the one that mattered.
0:16:26 > 0:16:29He didn't find the way that English was studied in Cambridge
0:16:29 > 0:16:31in the least bit sympathetic
0:16:31 > 0:16:37and the turning point was the famous visitation of the fox.
0:16:45 > 0:16:48'And every week we had to produce an essay
0:16:48 > 0:16:51'and I stayed up to about two or three in the morning
0:16:51 > 0:16:54'trying to push through this barrier to write an essay.
0:16:56 > 0:16:58'And finally I just had to give up...
0:16:59 > 0:17:01'..and went to bed.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05'And I immediately dreamed I was back at my table'
0:17:05 > 0:17:06in my dream,
0:17:06 > 0:17:08as I sat at my table over my essay.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11The door opened
0:17:11 > 0:17:13and round the side of the door
0:17:13 > 0:17:14came the head of a fox.
0:17:14 > 0:17:17And he was a man, he was a small man,
0:17:17 > 0:17:18but he was a fox.
0:17:20 > 0:17:22And he put his hand on the page
0:17:22 > 0:17:24and as he put it down
0:17:24 > 0:17:25he said,
0:17:25 > 0:17:27"You have to stop this.
0:17:27 > 0:17:28"You're destroying us."
0:17:32 > 0:17:35And the fox, the wild creature,
0:17:35 > 0:17:38becomes an image for poetry itself.
0:17:38 > 0:17:42And he knows that if he goes in for the academic world,
0:17:42 > 0:17:45he won't be a great poet.
0:17:45 > 0:17:48And he wants to be a poet more than anything else.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52Ted Hughes claimed that as a result of this vision
0:17:52 > 0:17:55of this man-fox,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58which burnt the page of his student essay,
0:17:58 > 0:18:01he immediately gave up studying English literature
0:18:01 > 0:18:03and changed to anthropology instead
0:18:03 > 0:18:05for the latter part of his degree.
0:18:08 > 0:18:10"Through the window I see no star
0:18:11 > 0:18:13"Something more near
0:18:13 > 0:18:15"Though deeper within darkness
0:18:15 > 0:18:17"Is entering the loneliness.
0:18:22 > 0:18:24"Cold
0:18:24 > 0:18:25"Delicately as the dark snow
0:18:27 > 0:18:30"A fox's nose touches twig, leaf."
0:18:33 > 0:18:36If he's got the words in that poem right,
0:18:36 > 0:18:39it will have a life,
0:18:39 > 0:18:43a life force and he talks about how it will stand up
0:18:43 > 0:18:46and come towards the mind of the reader.
0:18:46 > 0:18:48And, actually, he's right.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51You know, look at us. We're still talking about that poem now,
0:18:51 > 0:18:54it's in our head, he's put it there.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58"The window is starless, still,
0:18:58 > 0:19:00"The clock ticks
0:19:00 > 0:19:02"The page is printed."
0:19:08 > 0:19:10It comes back to this idea of the poem
0:19:10 > 0:19:13as a primitive form of magic.
0:19:16 > 0:19:20Words can have a very transformative effect.
0:19:21 > 0:19:24If you get a poem right,
0:19:24 > 0:19:27you can change how somebody thinks about something,
0:19:27 > 0:19:30you can change their way of being, their way of doing.
0:19:30 > 0:19:35His way of thinking about the world is constantly shot through
0:19:35 > 0:19:37with the idea of another world,
0:19:37 > 0:19:39a supernatural world,
0:19:39 > 0:19:42a sense that there are mysterious forces above the human.
0:19:43 > 0:19:47I know my father was fascinated in how people's minds worked,
0:19:47 > 0:19:49this idea of magic
0:19:49 > 0:19:51and the idea of spirituality,
0:19:51 > 0:19:54how people can have a belief in something
0:19:54 > 0:19:57of which there is no evidence.
0:19:57 > 0:19:59My father took that much further.
0:20:03 > 0:20:08He was interested in the mysterious movements of the mind.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13Things which are outside reason.
0:20:13 > 0:20:16He was very interested in a shaman authority.
0:20:16 > 0:20:18Ted was absolutely serious about that.
0:20:18 > 0:20:21I mean, just as serious he was, say,
0:20:21 > 0:20:23as about the poetry of TS Eliot or anything else.
0:20:23 > 0:20:26He and his sister Olwyn were always casting horoscopes.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29There's a lovely letter he wrote to his sister Olwyn
0:20:29 > 0:20:33very soon after Frieda, his first daughter, was born.
0:20:33 > 0:20:35He casts the horoscope
0:20:35 > 0:20:39and talks about Aries, which is her star sign,
0:20:39 > 0:20:42and the position of the sun, the moon, the different planets.
0:20:46 > 0:20:48'That's your horoscope from when you were born.'
0:20:48 > 0:20:50Oh...
0:20:50 > 0:20:53I've never seen my horoscope
0:20:53 > 0:20:56that he wrote out.
0:20:56 > 0:20:57Can I keep this?
0:20:57 > 0:21:00MUSIC: I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone
0:21:02 > 0:21:05He took it very seriously, that interest in the occult.
0:21:05 > 0:21:07I've been told that, you know,
0:21:07 > 0:21:11he tried to determine the launch dates of his book
0:21:11 > 0:21:15by planetary alignments and, you know,
0:21:15 > 0:21:18there's talk of seances
0:21:18 > 0:21:21and trying to get in touch with the spirit world.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27'Did Dan tell you how we worked the Ouija board?
0:21:27 > 0:21:29'We were at Jim's.
0:21:29 > 0:21:33'Jim, his girlfriend, Dan and I each put a finger on the glass.'
0:21:33 > 0:21:38That evening, Ted suggested we got out the ouija board.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41It was my first and last experience.
0:21:41 > 0:21:43It was very bizarre.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45All I can say is that because nothing happened
0:21:45 > 0:21:46for such a long time,
0:21:46 > 0:21:49I got bored and started answering.
0:21:49 > 0:21:51'We got someone who called himself Pan.
0:21:51 > 0:21:54'We asked if it knew Shakespeare.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56'It said, "Yes, but not personally."'
0:21:56 > 0:22:00I had to use my wits to answer the questions
0:22:00 > 0:22:02which Ted was firing at the spirit.
0:22:03 > 0:22:07'We asked it to recite its favourite line and it spelt,
0:22:07 > 0:22:10'"Never, never, never, never," out of Lear.
0:22:11 > 0:22:14'We then asked it to go on it, but it refused.
0:22:14 > 0:22:16'It said, "I forget,"
0:22:16 > 0:22:18'so we forced it a little.'
0:22:18 > 0:22:20Ted came back, "How does it go on?"
0:22:20 > 0:22:22and I couldn't quite remember,
0:22:22 > 0:22:24so I had to improvise
0:22:24 > 0:22:27three lines of rusty Shakespeare.
0:22:29 > 0:22:31Ted thought this was marvellous,
0:22:31 > 0:22:33except he pointed out afterwards
0:22:33 > 0:22:37that Shakespeare would never have used the word "branch",
0:22:37 > 0:22:40he would've said "bough" of a tree.
0:22:40 > 0:22:42So I kicked myself.
0:22:43 > 0:22:45# I put a spell on you. #
0:22:50 > 0:22:55Because of Robert Graves' interest in mythology
0:22:55 > 0:22:58and magic, essentially...
0:23:00 > 0:23:04..I think Ted was a kind of conduit for that
0:23:04 > 0:23:06to a great whole group of people.
0:23:06 > 0:23:09He was, like many in his generation,
0:23:09 > 0:23:12fascinated by the White Goddess.
0:23:12 > 0:23:14The White Goddess is the muse,
0:23:14 > 0:23:18the muse, the powerful Greek figure who endows the poet
0:23:18 > 0:23:20with the power to write.
0:23:20 > 0:23:22SUDDEN DRAMATIC MUSIC
0:23:22 > 0:23:24They all loved that,
0:23:24 > 0:23:26I think, because, it was a...
0:23:26 > 0:23:29a kind of...yet one more book
0:23:29 > 0:23:31which licensed sexuality
0:23:31 > 0:23:34at a time when it was a little dangerous.
0:23:34 > 0:23:35With his poetic friends,
0:23:35 > 0:23:37they put together a student magazine
0:23:37 > 0:23:40called the St Botolph's Review,
0:23:40 > 0:23:43and at the launch party for the magazine,
0:23:43 > 0:23:46Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath met for the first time.
0:23:46 > 0:23:53# I only have eyes
0:23:53 > 0:24:01# For you, dear. #
0:24:03 > 0:24:06He went there with his girlfriend, she went with her boyfriend.
0:24:06 > 0:24:08They danced, they had a few drinks
0:24:08 > 0:24:13and famously they kissed each other and she bit him.
0:24:13 > 0:24:14FEROCIOUS ROARING
0:24:16 > 0:24:18"Your eyes squeezed in your face
0:24:18 > 0:24:20"A crush of diamonds
0:24:20 > 0:24:21"Incredibly bright
0:24:22 > 0:24:24"Bright as a crush of tears
0:24:24 > 0:24:26"That might have been tears of joy
0:24:26 > 0:24:27"A squeeze of joy
0:24:29 > 0:24:33"You meant to knock me out with your vivacity
0:24:33 > 0:24:36"I remember little from the rest of that evening
0:24:36 > 0:24:39"I slid away with my girlfriend
0:24:39 > 0:24:42"Nothing except her hissing rage in a doorway
0:24:42 > 0:24:46"And my stupefied interrogation of your blue headscarf from my pocket
0:24:48 > 0:24:50"And the swelling ring-moat of tooth marks
0:24:50 > 0:24:53"That was to brand my face for the next month
0:24:54 > 0:24:56"Then me beneath it for good."
0:24:58 > 0:25:02Neither of them could get the other out of each other's minds,
0:25:02 > 0:25:04so in her diary,
0:25:04 > 0:25:08she starts writing obsessively about Ted,
0:25:08 > 0:25:10a poem about desire coming upon her
0:25:10 > 0:25:13and the panther becomes Ted.
0:25:13 > 0:25:16And then she hopes that he's going to come and visit her in her student rooms,
0:25:16 > 0:25:21that she will hear the tread of the panther on the stairs.
0:25:21 > 0:25:23The poet supercharges experience.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26He becomes the panther, she becomes the white goddess.
0:25:29 > 0:25:32And it does become a whirlwind romance
0:25:32 > 0:25:35and within a matter of just four months
0:25:35 > 0:25:36they're married.
0:25:36 > 0:25:39MUSIC: Hammers by Nils Frahm
0:25:55 > 0:26:00That was a need for him to be with somebody
0:26:00 > 0:26:03with her animation and energy
0:26:03 > 0:26:07and...love of life, really.
0:26:07 > 0:26:12It seems an absurd thing to say for someone who was going to kill themselves,
0:26:12 > 0:26:16but the fact is the way she decorated, the way she gardened,
0:26:16 > 0:26:18the way she picked daffodils,
0:26:18 > 0:26:20everything is full of energy.
0:26:20 > 0:26:23He needed her energy, really.
0:26:30 > 0:26:34There was definitely a time where Hughes and Plath
0:26:34 > 0:26:38were feeding off each other poetically,
0:26:38 > 0:26:40encouraging each other.
0:26:40 > 0:26:43You know, they'd formed this partnership
0:26:43 > 0:26:46which was going to take on the world.
0:26:46 > 0:26:51They were going to, you know, create incredible bodies of work together.
0:26:51 > 0:26:55There is a real sense that they worked together as a team.
0:26:55 > 0:26:58I remember my father telling me that...
0:26:58 > 0:27:00But just sitting at a desk,
0:27:00 > 0:27:02or a long table,
0:27:02 > 0:27:04and he said his end would be piles of papers and mess
0:27:04 > 0:27:08and he said, "And your mother's end would be absolutely neat
0:27:08 > 0:27:10"and everything would be neatly in order,
0:27:10 > 0:27:12"and the pens and so on,
0:27:12 > 0:27:13"before she'd start work."
0:27:13 > 0:27:15And he was just this mass of creativity
0:27:15 > 0:27:18at the other end of the table.
0:27:18 > 0:27:21They were very supportive of each other.
0:27:21 > 0:27:24SYLVIA: I feel that I'd never be writing as I am
0:27:24 > 0:27:25and as much as I am
0:27:25 > 0:27:29without Ted's understanding and cooperation, really.
0:27:29 > 0:27:32TED: Apart from my experiences in my life,
0:27:32 > 0:27:34I also have, in a way,
0:27:34 > 0:27:37Sylvia's experiences of hers.
0:27:37 > 0:27:39It's like a medium.
0:27:39 > 0:27:42And what she writes out needn't be a door,
0:27:42 > 0:27:44the contents of her own mind.
0:27:44 > 0:27:46It needn't be anything she knows.
0:27:46 > 0:27:49But it's something that somebody in the room knows.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53And in this way, two people who are sympathetic to each other,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56who are compatible in this sort of spiritual way,
0:27:56 > 0:27:58in fact make up one person
0:27:58 > 0:28:00and make up one source of power.
0:28:02 > 0:28:05It was two people in love, having a relationship,
0:28:05 > 0:28:09doing the same thing and trying to find a way
0:28:09 > 0:28:13to get somewhere in a world that must have been quite difficult,
0:28:13 > 0:28:15especially doing what they did -
0:28:15 > 0:28:17poetry.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19She organised him.
0:28:19 > 0:28:21He wrote by hand, but she typed.
0:28:21 > 0:28:23She typed up his poems,
0:28:23 > 0:28:27she submitted them to all the literary magazines.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31And it was Sylvia who spotted that
0:28:31 > 0:28:33a major New York publisher
0:28:33 > 0:28:36was running a competition
0:28:36 > 0:28:39for the best first collection of poems.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43And she submitted not her own poems, but Ted's.
0:28:43 > 0:28:46She put together the book called The Hawk In The Rain
0:28:46 > 0:28:50that won the competition that got Ted published
0:28:50 > 0:28:51and that made his name.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56He sort of exploded on to the scene with The Hawk In The Rain.
0:28:56 > 0:29:00He seemed like the best writer of his generation immediately.
0:29:02 > 0:29:05I must have met Ted Hughes early on,
0:29:05 > 0:29:08because I remember that we talked about Hawk In The Rain,
0:29:08 > 0:29:09which I was stunned by.
0:29:09 > 0:29:15It was definitely a new voice.
0:29:15 > 0:29:36and I mean English poetry, British if you want,
0:29:36 > 0:29:39"Floundering black astride and blinding wet
0:29:39 > 0:29:51"Till day rose, then under an orange sky
0:29:51 > 0:29:54"Flexing like the lens of a mad eye."
0:29:59 > 0:30:02He was taken up by Faber and Faber,
0:30:02 > 0:30:10who were, are, were and are
0:30:10 > 0:30:15PARTY CHATTER
0:30:19 > 0:30:32a man called Al Alvarez,
0:30:32 > 0:30:36and completely put Ted Hughes on the map.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39I just find it difficult to remember stuff.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43It's kind of all faded away.
0:30:44 > 0:30:46Mercifully...
0:30:46 > 0:30:51I used to be a very clever young man, let me tell you.
0:30:51 > 0:30:54But you were also quite bored by the movement poets... Totally.
0:30:54 > 0:30:56..and you then wrote that famous essay
0:30:56 > 0:30:59called Beyond The Gentility Principle,
0:30:59 > 0:31:00which was in The New Poetry and they...
0:31:02 > 0:31:05That you challenged... What I did... ..gentility.
0:31:05 > 0:31:08What I did back in those days,
0:31:08 > 0:31:10I challenged the whole fucking lot of them.
0:31:10 > 0:31:12Ted was different,
0:31:12 > 0:31:14just something else, you know.
0:31:14 > 0:31:15I just thought...
0:31:17 > 0:31:20He was onto something that I really thought mattered.
0:31:21 > 0:31:24It was kind of my responsibility, back then
0:31:24 > 0:31:28to say, "This is a poet you've got to read,
0:31:28 > 0:31:31"not blah-blah-blah."
0:31:31 > 0:31:33The world was full of blah-blah-blah.
0:31:35 > 0:31:38"My feet are locked upon the rough bark
0:31:38 > 0:31:40"It took the whole of Creation
0:31:40 > 0:31:43"To produce my foot, my each feather
0:31:44 > 0:31:46"Now I hold Creation in my foot
0:31:47 > 0:31:50"Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly
0:31:51 > 0:31:54"I kill where I please because it is all mine
0:31:54 > 0:31:57"There is no sophistry in my body
0:31:57 > 0:31:59"My manners are tearing off heads
0:31:59 > 0:32:00"The allotment of death."
0:32:03 > 0:32:07I think what was unique about it was the explosiveness of the image,
0:32:07 > 0:32:11the way the words knocked together, made sparks.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14Well, if you looked at the poetry of the movement,
0:32:14 > 0:32:16the previous generation,
0:32:16 > 0:32:20John Wain, Kingsley Amis, even Larkin,
0:32:20 > 0:32:21their work wasn't doing that.
0:32:21 > 0:32:24It looked genteel compared with Ted's.
0:32:24 > 0:32:28He was a modernist poet, but he belonged to
0:32:28 > 0:32:29a dwindling tradition...
0:32:30 > 0:32:33..which is that of a country poet.
0:32:34 > 0:32:39In a bizarre way, that appeals to a townie audience.
0:32:39 > 0:32:42"Ted was already a powerful presence,
0:32:42 > 0:32:45"even though he was just beginning.
0:32:45 > 0:32:49"He was a man who seemed to carry his own climate with him,
0:32:49 > 0:32:51"to create his own atmosphere.
0:32:51 > 0:32:55"And in those days, that atmosphere was dark and dangerous.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01"It was the darkness many women found irresistible.
0:33:01 > 0:33:03"One of them said, he looked like a gunfighter."
0:33:05 > 0:33:07If you read Hawk Roosting,
0:33:07 > 0:33:09he is that hawk.
0:33:09 > 0:33:11He just absolutely is it.
0:33:11 > 0:33:14And he knows what it's like to be a predator
0:33:14 > 0:33:16who looks down on his kingdom
0:33:16 > 0:33:20and the frail creatures that he's going to stab with his beak
0:33:20 > 0:33:23without any doubt or remorse or pity or anything.
0:33:24 > 0:33:27So much attention was given to him
0:33:27 > 0:33:29and he was such a charismatic figure.
0:33:29 > 0:33:33You know that everyone was very happy to write about him
0:33:33 > 0:33:35and talk about him,
0:33:35 > 0:33:37so he was definitely in the ascendency,
0:33:37 > 0:33:40he was in the position of power.
0:33:40 > 0:33:44The conversation recorded by Ruth Fainlight,
0:33:44 > 0:33:48in which the two women poets
0:33:48 > 0:33:54compare the extraordinary success of their mates,
0:33:54 > 0:33:59Alan Sillitoe on the one hand and Ted on the other,
0:33:59 > 0:34:04in comparison with their own small success.
0:34:04 > 0:34:05One has to realise that...
0:34:07 > 0:34:11..Sylvia never again in her lifetime saw real success.
0:34:12 > 0:34:14I mean, she wasn't Sylvia Plath when I met her,
0:34:14 > 0:34:18she was Sylvia Plath who was married to Ted Hughes...yes.
0:34:18 > 0:34:21I liked her and understood her.
0:34:21 > 0:34:23I'd read her poems and admired them.
0:34:25 > 0:34:29Being in the position of power
0:34:29 > 0:34:31was important to each of them.
0:34:31 > 0:34:35You know, and the one who wasn't in the position of power...
0:34:36 > 0:34:40..wasn't altogether happy about that state of affairs.
0:34:57 > 0:34:58I think Sylvia was pleased for him...
0:35:00 > 0:35:02..but, by the time she'd had her first baby,
0:35:02 > 0:35:05I think depression,
0:35:05 > 0:35:07not so uncommon after the birth of a child,
0:35:07 > 0:35:09began to set in.
0:35:10 > 0:35:12Yes, she was always fragile.
0:35:12 > 0:35:16She could go tipping down by any manner of means.
0:35:25 > 0:35:29At that point, the most admired poet in America
0:35:29 > 0:35:32was a man called Robert Lowell.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36Lowell published a new volume of poems called Life Studies
0:35:36 > 0:35:41and it was revolutionary because it was all about his own mental breakdown.
0:35:41 > 0:35:46It was poetry in a mode of confessional directness
0:35:46 > 0:35:49that had not really been seen before.
0:35:49 > 0:35:50Ted was very sceptical
0:35:50 > 0:35:53about the autobiographical elements of the work.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55He says, "That's for Americans."
0:35:55 > 0:35:58Sylvia absolutely lapped it up
0:35:58 > 0:36:01and it released her into feeling
0:36:01 > 0:36:04that she could write about her own self,
0:36:04 > 0:36:06her own life, much more directly.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10And she writes a series of poems directly about her own nervous breakdown.
0:36:11 > 0:36:14That, for her, and certainly Ted believed this,
0:36:14 > 0:36:16was a breakthrough moment.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28SYLVIA: ..when it comes to managing a nine-month-old baby.
0:36:28 > 0:36:31And we're are dreaming of a house
0:36:31 > 0:36:34where I can shout to Ted from one end to the other
0:36:34 > 0:36:36and he won't be able to hear me,
0:36:36 > 0:36:38but I don't know how far away that is.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43'I heard them on the radio, I felt very sorry for them.
0:36:43 > 0:36:47'They seemed to have a difficult time with a baby to bring up
0:36:47 > 0:36:49'and them both being writers.'
0:36:49 > 0:36:52And we lived in North Devon
0:36:52 > 0:36:55and we were, at that point, renting a big farmhouse,
0:36:55 > 0:36:59so I wrote to Ted and Sylvia -
0:36:59 > 0:37:01care of the BBC - and said,
0:37:01 > 0:37:05"If you'd like a holiday with us, I can look after the children
0:37:05 > 0:37:09"and all the logistics of that
0:37:09 > 0:37:12"and you two can go off and write."
0:37:12 > 0:37:14And I heard nothing.
0:37:14 > 0:37:16But low and behold a year later,
0:37:16 > 0:37:19I had a letter from Ted saying,
0:37:19 > 0:37:22"We, too, are living in a thatched farmhouse.
0:37:22 > 0:37:24"We'd like you to come and have lunch with us."
0:37:25 > 0:37:29Ted and Sylvia decided to move to Court Green in Devon.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32This was Ted's wish,
0:37:32 > 0:37:35because Ted was profoundly a countryman.
0:37:36 > 0:37:38"I brought you to Devon
0:37:38 > 0:37:40"I brought you into my dreamland
0:37:42 > 0:37:44"I sleepwalked to you into my land of totems
0:37:44 > 0:37:45"Never-never land
0:37:47 > 0:37:49"The orchard in the west
0:37:50 > 0:37:52"I wrestled with the blankets, the caul and the cord
0:37:54 > 0:37:56"And you stayed with me
0:37:56 > 0:37:58"Gallant and desperate and hopeful
0:37:58 > 0:38:00"Listening for different gods
0:38:02 > 0:38:04"Stripping off your American royalty
0:38:04 > 0:38:06"Garment by garment."
0:38:09 > 0:38:13This photo is of my mother pregnant with my brother
0:38:13 > 0:38:16and holding me and me holding a kitten.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19And I like that because it's all of us together,
0:38:19 > 0:38:22except for my father, obviously.
0:38:22 > 0:38:24And I wrote a little poem about that...
0:38:24 > 0:38:26My mother is laughing
0:38:26 > 0:38:30Holding me against the bulge of my unborn brother
0:38:30 > 0:38:33Kitten strangling in my eager palms
0:38:33 > 0:38:35My father photographs us
0:38:35 > 0:38:38All his eggs in one basket
0:38:38 > 0:38:40Bundled in my mother's arms.
0:38:41 > 0:38:43He was kind to her.
0:38:43 > 0:38:46I think what people have missed is that he...
0:38:48 > 0:38:51He was endlessly protective to her
0:38:51 > 0:38:54and particularly to her wish to write poetry.
0:38:54 > 0:38:57I mean, I didn't know what sort of writing it was.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00One day I said to Ted,
0:39:00 > 0:39:03"Is she writing poetry?"
0:39:03 > 0:39:04And he said,
0:39:04 > 0:39:06STERNLY: "No, she IS a poet!"
0:39:07 > 0:39:10MUSIC: Caged In Stammheim by Demdike Stare
0:39:25 > 0:39:27Her problem was that she was often blocked -
0:39:27 > 0:39:30things which might turn into a story
0:39:30 > 0:39:32and she didn't follow up on poetic ideas,
0:39:32 > 0:39:34which hadn't come to fruit.
0:39:36 > 0:39:38He helped her a lot with that.
0:39:38 > 0:39:42And what he was trying to do was to reach into her inner being
0:39:42 > 0:39:44and her inner being was fractured.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49She really had a big crack right down the middle.
0:39:49 > 0:39:54She needed huge amounts of attention from him.
0:39:54 > 0:39:57And he would hypnotise her,
0:39:57 > 0:40:02to help her relax and help her write.
0:40:02 > 0:40:06There is no doubt that Ted's assistance
0:40:06 > 0:40:09helped Sylvia Plath to develop
0:40:09 > 0:40:12from a technically very accomplished poet
0:40:12 > 0:40:16into a poet of extraordinary force and originality.
0:40:19 > 0:40:22When Ted gave her resources
0:40:22 > 0:40:26for writing a more mythic kind of poetry,
0:40:26 > 0:40:28the demons did come out.
0:40:28 > 0:40:30The result was great poetry,
0:40:30 > 0:40:32but it also, perhaps,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35was what tipped her over the edge mentally.
0:40:44 > 0:40:50"Black magic and pagan superstitions got him where he wanted to be.
0:40:50 > 0:40:53"They worked fine for him.
0:40:53 > 0:40:57"But for Sylvia, it was a foreign country in every sense.
0:40:57 > 0:41:01"Belief in dark gods didn't come naturally to her.
0:41:01 > 0:41:06"But she'd always been good at things, fiercely ambitious,
0:41:06 > 0:41:09"anything her husband could do, she could do better.
0:41:09 > 0:41:12"So she went along willingly."
0:41:19 > 0:41:25She does record jealousy and suspicion.
0:41:25 > 0:41:29When she was angry, he could see the power in her.
0:41:29 > 0:41:34She began to write out of kind of not a hatred of life,
0:41:34 > 0:41:39but a peculiar obsession with death which was not healthy
0:41:39 > 0:41:43and was there long before Assia arrived on the scene.
0:41:54 > 0:41:58"We knew what was waiting for us...
0:41:58 > 0:42:00BIRDS CRY
0:42:00 > 0:42:05"The Sea Witches The Greeks knew about them,
0:42:05 > 0:42:08"The faces of mortal women, but their hair
0:42:08 > 0:42:11"Their hair is legend."
0:42:11 > 0:42:13Assia came to work at Notley's,
0:42:13 > 0:42:16which was the advertising agency which employed me.
0:42:16 > 0:42:20In those days, advertising was regarded as the work of the devil.
0:42:20 > 0:42:25Yet, it's surprising how many poets and writers
0:42:25 > 0:42:27were employed by the big advertising agencies.
0:42:28 > 0:42:31'At your chemist, 4 and 11 pence.'
0:42:36 > 0:42:39Assia told me about how she met Ted.
0:42:39 > 0:42:41Assia was very proud
0:42:41 > 0:42:46and, apparently, Sylvia asked her to peel the potatoes
0:42:46 > 0:42:48and Assia took offence,
0:42:48 > 0:42:50because she didn't like being treated like a servant.
0:42:50 > 0:42:54And Ted was down the bottom of the garden picking beans.
0:42:54 > 0:42:57So Assia went down and chatted up Ted.
0:42:58 > 0:43:00And they kissed behind the bean poles
0:43:00 > 0:43:03and that was the beginning of the affair,
0:43:03 > 0:43:05which Assia told me with some pride.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09I asked her what happened.
0:43:09 > 0:43:11And she said,
0:43:11 > 0:43:13"Well, it was like taking candy from a baby."
0:43:15 > 0:43:19She had no doubt about her own seductive powers.
0:43:20 > 0:43:22She drifted into our agency
0:43:22 > 0:43:26and she'd come straight from a lunchtime assignation with Ted.
0:43:27 > 0:43:31And she said, "Oh, you know, he's so wonderful.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33"Do you know, in bed, he smells like a butcher!"
0:43:34 > 0:43:36Wow!
0:43:37 > 0:43:41Sylvia sensed what was going on
0:43:41 > 0:43:44and when she picked up a telephone call
0:43:44 > 0:43:48she recognised Assia's voice, though she tried to disguise it.
0:43:48 > 0:43:53Assia had rung up on the phone and pretended to be a man.
0:43:53 > 0:43:57And she said, "I know you're not a man,"
0:43:57 > 0:44:02and called Ted downstairs to the phone and he answered it.
0:44:02 > 0:44:07And she said, "He lies to me, he's become a little man."
0:44:07 > 0:44:12She ripped the phone out of the wall
0:44:12 > 0:44:15and said he had to leave.
0:44:15 > 0:44:20I think it was a great pity that she took such precipitous action.
0:44:20 > 0:44:24I think she should have been patient
0:44:24 > 0:44:26and been a little bit...
0:44:26 > 0:44:27understanding.
0:44:37 > 0:44:39SYLVIA: "I made a model of you
0:44:39 > 0:44:41"A man in black with a Meinkampf look
0:44:41 > 0:44:43"And a love of the rack and the screw
0:44:43 > 0:44:45"And I said, 'I do, I do'
0:44:47 > 0:44:49"So, Daddy, I'm finally through
0:44:49 > 0:44:52"The black telephone's off at the root
0:44:52 > 0:44:54"The voice's just can't worm through
0:44:55 > 0:44:59"If I've killed one man, I've killed two
0:44:59 > 0:45:02"The vampire who said he was you
0:45:02 > 0:45:04"And drank my blood for a year
0:45:04 > 0:45:06"Seven years if you want to know."
0:45:12 > 0:45:18One can see how Ted, in some senses, becomes the Meinkampf figure,
0:45:18 > 0:45:20but it's not really Ted.
0:45:20 > 0:45:24What she said about that poem, is it's a poem written
0:45:24 > 0:45:28from the point of view of a girl with an Electra complex,
0:45:28 > 0:45:30a fixation on her father.
0:45:30 > 0:45:33The poem does need to be seen as a mythic construct,
0:45:33 > 0:45:35as well as a personal statement.
0:45:40 > 0:45:44She would have bonfires of his work,
0:45:44 > 0:45:46if she was angry with him.
0:45:48 > 0:45:50He kind of admired that, you know.
0:45:50 > 0:45:53He would, when she'd burn up some really important thing of his,
0:45:53 > 0:45:56and was screaming at him, he was saying,
0:45:56 > 0:45:59"There, that's what needs to be in your poetry,
0:45:59 > 0:46:00"get that into your work!"
0:46:02 > 0:46:06"By the end, the black magic which Ted used cannily
0:46:06 > 0:46:10"to get through to the sources of his inspiration
0:46:10 > 0:46:13"had taken Sylvia over.
0:46:13 > 0:46:15"When he left her for another woman,
0:46:15 > 0:46:17"she took his manuscripts,
0:46:17 > 0:46:21"mixed them with a debris of fingernail pairings
0:46:21 > 0:46:24"and dandruff from his desk
0:46:24 > 0:46:27"and burnt them in a witches' ritual bonfire."
0:46:28 > 0:46:30"As the flames died down,
0:46:30 > 0:46:35"a single fragment of charred paper drifted onto her foot.
0:46:36 > 0:46:40"It was the name of the woman he'd left her for, Assia."
0:46:52 > 0:46:54"With the smoke of the fire you tended
0:46:54 > 0:46:57"Flames I had lit, unwitting
0:46:57 > 0:47:01"That whitened in the oxygen jet of your incantatory whisper."
0:47:04 > 0:47:07Whatever went wrong, wrong it went.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11And Ted went back to London
0:47:11 > 0:47:15and Sylvia decided she couldn't make a life in the country.
0:47:15 > 0:47:19And she found a lovely flat,
0:47:19 > 0:47:21where Yeats had once lived,
0:47:21 > 0:47:23in Chalcot Square.
0:47:26 > 0:47:30It was the coldest winter for 150 years.
0:47:30 > 0:47:32Everything froze
0:47:32 > 0:47:34and she was in a strange state.
0:47:37 > 0:47:41She'd been given monoamine oxidase inhibitors,
0:47:41 > 0:47:44which is not something people would do nowadays.
0:47:44 > 0:47:49And that means she was given a burst of energy...
0:47:49 > 0:47:52It's a bad idea with someone who's potentially suicidal.
0:47:53 > 0:47:56She'd determined to, as it were, gamble.
0:47:59 > 0:48:03She put milk and bread out for the kids,
0:48:03 > 0:48:08she taped up their door so that the gas couldn't get through to them.
0:48:08 > 0:48:10She'd written the poems that went into Ariel.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13She was certainly able to leave them behind
0:48:13 > 0:48:16as a typescript for Ted to find.
0:48:16 > 0:48:18She also left the number of the doctor...
0:48:20 > 0:48:23She was obviously ambiguous about her intentions.
0:48:48 > 0:48:52On the radio in January, there was this radio play by Ted
0:48:52 > 0:48:55called the Difficulties Of A Bridegroom
0:48:55 > 0:49:00and that, in a way, was, I think, Sylvia's death warrant.
0:49:00 > 0:49:04It concerned a man running over a hare in the car
0:49:04 > 0:49:08and taking the hare's body to a butcher
0:49:08 > 0:49:13and getting some money and buying red roses for his mistress.
0:49:13 > 0:49:14with that money.
0:49:16 > 0:49:20And this must have given her a most horrible shock.
0:49:20 > 0:49:25I think the play gave a picture of him being cruel.
0:49:25 > 0:49:28I mean, why would he write such a thing?
0:49:28 > 0:49:32Ted's belief in shamanism would lead him to think of her
0:49:32 > 0:49:34as being like a hare,
0:49:34 > 0:49:38magic and mysterious and very powerful.
0:49:38 > 0:49:43The connection between the shamanic animal being a hare being Sylvia
0:49:43 > 0:49:47and then buying roses with a dead hare
0:49:47 > 0:49:49and giving them to Assia,
0:49:49 > 0:49:52was the most horrible thing to contemplate.
0:49:54 > 0:49:57Do you think that had an effect on her?
0:49:57 > 0:49:58Yes, it certainly did.
0:49:58 > 0:50:02That was...the heaviest cross that Ted had to carry
0:50:02 > 0:50:04for the rest of his life.
0:50:05 > 0:50:09Ted looked...he looked honestly like a beaten dog.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12He looked so upset and he said,
0:50:12 > 0:50:15"Doesn't fall to many men...
0:50:17 > 0:50:19"..to murder a genius."
0:50:19 > 0:50:22And I said, "You haven't murdered anybody.
0:50:22 > 0:50:26"You didn't kill her."
0:50:26 > 0:50:29And he said, "I might just as well have
0:50:29 > 0:50:33"and I hear the wolves howling all night in the park
0:50:33 > 0:50:35"and it seems apt."
0:50:37 > 0:50:41"The wolves lifted us in their long voices
0:50:41 > 0:50:44"They wound us and enmeshed us in their wailing for you
0:50:44 > 0:50:46"Their mourning for us...
0:50:46 > 0:50:48WOLVES HOWL
0:50:48 > 0:50:50"They wove us into their voices
0:50:50 > 0:50:53"We lay in your death
0:50:53 > 0:50:55"In the fallen snow, under falling snow...
0:50:56 > 0:50:58WOLVES HOWL
0:50:59 > 0:51:02"As my body sank into the folk-take
0:51:02 > 0:51:04"Where the wolves are singing in the forest
0:51:04 > 0:51:08"For two babes, who have turned, in their sleep,
0:51:08 > 0:51:09"Into orphans
0:51:09 > 0:51:11"Beside the corpse of their mother."
0:51:14 > 0:51:18He's in an awful position and his letters showed this...
0:51:18 > 0:51:21"When somebody who has shared life with you
0:51:21 > 0:51:25"as much as Sylvia shared it with me dies,
0:51:25 > 0:51:27"then life somehow dies.
0:51:28 > 0:51:33"The gold standard of it is somehow conversed into death.
0:51:34 > 0:51:39"And it is a minute by minute effort to find any sense in life...
0:51:39 > 0:51:41"or any value."
0:51:43 > 0:51:48To have an infidelity in your marriage is by no means the worst thing
0:51:48 > 0:51:50and people get through that.
0:51:50 > 0:51:53Not everybody kills themself.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56It is just incredibly difficult for him to see what to do.
0:51:56 > 0:51:59He then felt burdened...
0:51:59 > 0:52:02for the rest of his life
0:52:02 > 0:52:04by what had happened.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07So I feel sorry for his BURDEN.
0:52:07 > 0:52:10It's his fault, but it's still his burden.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26Ted, to do him justice,
0:52:26 > 0:52:31had a curiously detached attitude towards her writing.
0:52:32 > 0:52:37Not detached in a negative way, detached in a positive way.
0:52:37 > 0:52:41Not, actually, anything they might have said about him,
0:52:41 > 0:52:43but just, "Wow! This is literature."
0:52:44 > 0:52:47"Dying is an art like everything else
0:52:48 > 0:52:50"I do it exceptionally well
0:52:50 > 0:52:53"I do it so it feels like hell
0:52:53 > 0:52:55"I do it so it feels real
0:52:56 > 0:52:58"I guess you could say I've a call."
0:52:59 > 0:53:02In the sense of Ariel, for instance,
0:53:02 > 0:53:04my mother was, I feel,
0:53:04 > 0:53:08frozen in a moment of a sort of aggressive reaction.
0:53:10 > 0:53:12And that's the moment that got frozen,
0:53:12 > 0:53:15because otherwise, had she lived longer,
0:53:15 > 0:53:17there would have been other collections,
0:53:17 > 0:53:20other evolutionary...poetry...
0:53:22 > 0:53:24..sort of sequences and that didn't happen.
0:53:26 > 0:53:28"Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
0:53:28 > 0:53:30"Beware, beware
0:53:31 > 0:53:35"Out of the ash I rise with my red hair
0:53:35 > 0:53:37"And I eat men like air."
0:53:39 > 0:53:41He did not have to publish Ariel.
0:53:41 > 0:53:46He honoured her work right through her...
0:53:46 > 0:53:48you know,
0:53:48 > 0:53:51long after her death and right through the life they had together.
0:53:51 > 0:53:55So, I think, for me, that speaks volumes...
0:53:55 > 0:53:57literally, actually.
0:53:57 > 0:54:01You can see why he might have been reluctant to publish them immediately.
0:54:03 > 0:54:05Not that there was any great enthusiasm for anyone
0:54:05 > 0:54:07to publish them, actually.
0:54:07 > 0:54:09I think he showed them to one or two publishers,
0:54:09 > 0:54:13who were not knocked out by them in 1963.
0:54:15 > 0:54:18Of course, two years later,
0:54:18 > 0:54:21they were the Pulitzer-prize-winning
0:54:21 > 0:54:23jewels of the crown.
0:54:24 > 0:54:26It was a huge head,
0:54:26 > 0:54:30double page spread in Time magazine,
0:54:30 > 0:54:33just the thing everybody had to read.
0:54:33 > 0:54:37One of the things which nobody likes to say
0:54:37 > 0:54:42was what sustained the family group after Sylvia's death
0:54:42 > 0:54:44was the cult of Sylvia.
0:54:44 > 0:54:48That was where the royalties were coming in.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51Whether he liked it or not, with two children to bring up,
0:54:51 > 0:54:54a living to make,
0:54:54 > 0:54:58locked into this eternally recurring story,
0:54:58 > 0:55:01the bad man, the man who killed Sylvia,
0:55:01 > 0:55:03but at the same time,
0:55:03 > 0:55:07the family income was heavily dependent on the myth.
0:55:09 > 0:55:11He passed the copyrights,
0:55:11 > 0:55:14the rights and the royalties from Sylvia Plath onto his children,
0:55:14 > 0:55:16Nick and Frieda.
0:55:16 > 0:55:20But that accusation of making money out of her legacy
0:55:20 > 0:55:21hung over him.
0:55:31 > 0:55:34By now in 1965,
0:55:34 > 0:55:39Sylvia was the most famous poet in the Anglo-Saxon world
0:55:39 > 0:55:42and suddenly Assia was the woman
0:55:42 > 0:55:44who was responsible for Sylvia's death.
0:55:45 > 0:55:49So she really felt quite lonely and hated in the literary world.
0:55:49 > 0:55:51To me, Assia was just...
0:55:51 > 0:55:54you know, the evil demon incarnate.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59In fact, we became very close.
0:55:59 > 0:56:02Yes, I became more and more sorry for her.
0:56:02 > 0:56:06And they both looked, you know, like...
0:56:07 > 0:56:10..medieval paintings of Adam and Eve
0:56:10 > 0:56:12being expelled from Paradise.
0:56:12 > 0:56:14You know, the way those faces...
0:56:15 > 0:56:17Oh.
0:56:17 > 0:56:20It was just so intense...
0:56:21 > 0:56:26..the emotion that was coming out of them.
0:56:26 > 0:56:30We were having lunch and she suddenly thought she saw Sylvia
0:56:30 > 0:56:32and she turned completely pale and she said,
0:56:32 > 0:56:34"That's Sylvia, that's Sylvia."
0:56:34 > 0:56:38And then it moved closer and it wasn't, but she said then that she haunts,
0:56:38 > 0:56:40she said, "She's haunting me."
0:56:40 > 0:56:42And she really did feel that, I think.
0:56:42 > 0:56:45Though...
0:56:45 > 0:56:47I don't think with any sense of guilt.
0:56:48 > 0:56:50I think with a sense of fury, really,
0:56:50 > 0:56:55that Sylvia had ruined her relationship with Ted.
0:57:04 > 0:57:07He must have drawn some of this belief
0:57:07 > 0:57:11in the power of poetry as a healing power,
0:57:11 > 0:57:13which he never, a belief he never lost.
0:57:13 > 0:57:16He always thought poetry could heal you.
0:57:16 > 0:57:19He decides to write a long cycle of poems
0:57:19 > 0:57:23based on a sort of motif he found
0:57:23 > 0:57:26in a lot of the folk tales that he knew.
0:57:34 > 0:57:39Well, he approaches it, as you might expect,
0:57:39 > 0:57:46And he uses Crow,
0:57:46 > 0:57:48must be the Inuit Raven.
0:57:49 > 0:57:53The Crow poems become a kind of anti-Bible.
0:57:53 > 0:58:08goes through all sorts of adventures.
0:58:08 > 0:58:15the idea that a story about a figure who defeats death,
0:58:15 > 0:58:17"Who is stronger than hope?
0:58:17 > 0:58:18"Death.
0:58:18 > 0:58:21"Who is stronger than the will?
0:58:21 > 0:58:26"Stronger than love?
0:58:26 > 0:58:28"Death.
0:58:28 > 0:58:33"But who is stronger than Death?
0:58:33 > 0:58:35"Who is stronger than Death?
0:58:35 > 0:58:38"Me, evidently," says Crow.
0:58:38 > 0:58:42And, you know, that's such an extraordinary...
0:58:42 > 0:58:46..bewildered assertion that he has survived all this.
0:58:46 > 0:58:50Only he doesn't really survive it.
0:58:54 > 0:58:56It's early 1969,
0:58:56 > 0:59:01Assia felt Ted had to make a commitment to her.
0:59:01 > 0:59:05She and Ted had had a child called Shura.
0:59:05 > 0:59:09They lived together, but a lot of the time they were living apart.
0:59:09 > 0:59:10It was a difficult relationship.
0:59:10 > 0:59:12Ted also began seeing someone else.
0:59:16 > 0:59:17They came around a lot.
0:59:17 > 0:59:19They were both in a terrible state.
0:59:19 > 0:59:22He'd always dressed in black, now she was dressed in black
0:59:22 > 0:59:24and they'd sit on either side of your fireplace,
0:59:24 > 0:59:27like a couple of black panthers hissing at each other,
0:59:27 > 0:59:29because they were quarrelling a lot.
0:59:31 > 0:59:34Ted promised to buy her a house,
0:59:34 > 0:59:37only she would have to find the house that Ted would like,
0:59:37 > 0:59:40so she would go all round the country and leave Shura with me.
0:59:41 > 0:59:44She would find one and then Ted would go and look at it
0:59:44 > 0:59:47and say no.
0:59:47 > 0:59:49I was worried for Assia.
0:59:49 > 0:59:52She did ask me once if anything happened to her,
0:59:52 > 0:59:55if I would look after Shura and I said yes.
0:59:56 > 0:59:59And it was very annoying when Assia
0:59:59 > 1:00:02decided Shura was going to have another fate.
1:00:24 > 1:00:30Assia was aware she was duplicating Sylvia's death,
1:00:30 > 1:00:32there can be no question of that.
1:00:35 > 1:00:38It wasn't quite the same circumstances
1:00:38 > 1:00:42because Sylvia had made sure that her children lived.
1:00:43 > 1:00:46Assia was essentially a lost soul,
1:00:46 > 1:00:48who was always, psychologically speaking,
1:00:48 > 1:00:50looking for an identity of her own.
1:00:50 > 1:00:54Sylvia provided Assia with a disastrous model.
1:00:54 > 1:00:58She wanted to resurrect Sylvia in herself.
1:00:58 > 1:01:01I think she recognised that,
1:01:01 > 1:01:06while she was more of a sexual success,
1:01:06 > 1:01:09Sylvia had a genius which she could never possess.
1:01:09 > 1:01:11That was what triggered it.
1:01:21 > 1:01:26Suddenly, Crow feels like it's massive,
1:01:26 > 1:01:29and it feels raw.
1:01:29 > 1:01:34It feels, um, instant.
1:01:35 > 1:01:38"Black is the gall lying on the bed of the blood
1:01:39 > 1:01:42"Black is the earth-globe, one inch under
1:01:42 > 1:01:44"An egg of blackness
1:01:44 > 1:01:47"Where sun and moon alternate their weathers
1:01:47 > 1:01:49"To hatch a crow
1:01:49 > 1:01:51"A black rainbow
1:01:51 > 1:01:55"Bent in emptiness over emptiness
1:01:55 > 1:01:57"But flying..."
1:01:59 > 1:02:05That black, black aspect to those poems...
1:02:07 > 1:02:10..it's a way of trying to explain it to himself,
1:02:10 > 1:02:12these terrible things that had happened.
1:02:12 > 1:02:18That there's this evil, you know it is a sort of Manichaean view
1:02:18 > 1:02:21of the world, isn't it?
1:02:21 > 1:02:27Evil being the reigning principle, really.
1:02:27 > 1:02:31I mean, if he could convince himself that that was the case,
1:02:31 > 1:02:35that must have eased his feeling of responsibility in some way.
1:02:36 > 1:02:39He felt that Crow was his masterpiece,
1:02:39 > 1:02:44that he had made that transition from experience into myth,
1:02:44 > 1:02:49created something that would be archetypal, eternal.
1:02:49 > 1:02:54Some critics said, "Yes, this is the great literary work of our time."
1:02:54 > 1:02:58Others thought it has gone too far,
1:02:58 > 1:03:00it's all blood, guts...
1:03:18 > 1:03:21Through the late 1960s and into the early 1970s,
1:03:21 > 1:03:24the feminist movement took off.
1:03:24 > 1:03:29And so Ariel became an iconic text for feminists.
1:03:29 > 1:03:32Sylvia was just the sort of thing
1:03:32 > 1:03:37which the rising feminist movement needed.
1:03:37 > 1:03:42That is, as an exemplar, as a martyr, as a saint.
1:03:42 > 1:03:45But, of course, that had the effect of making him
1:03:45 > 1:03:47into a character in her story.
1:03:47 > 1:03:52So, in 1970, there was a very influential anthology
1:03:52 > 1:03:54of feminist writings published,
1:03:54 > 1:03:58and it included one of Sylvia's poems, The Jailer,
1:03:58 > 1:04:01the idea of the husband as a jailer.
1:04:01 > 1:04:03Then the next year, a feminist,
1:04:03 > 1:04:08a New York feminist called Robin Morgan, actually published a poem.
1:04:11 > 1:04:15"How can I accuse Ted Hughes
1:04:15 > 1:04:18"Of what the entire British and American
1:04:18 > 1:04:20"Literary and critical establishment
1:04:20 > 1:04:22"Has been at great length to deny
1:04:22 > 1:04:26"Without ever saying it in so many words, of course
1:04:26 > 1:04:29"The murder of Sylvia Plath?
1:04:30 > 1:04:35"Having once been so successful at committing the perfect marriage
1:04:35 > 1:04:39"One can hardly blame Hughes for trying again
1:04:39 > 1:04:42"The second also was a suicide
1:04:42 > 1:04:44"Oh, didn't you know?
1:04:44 > 1:04:46"One night ring the doorbell
1:04:46 > 1:04:50"To enter a covey of his girlish fans
1:04:50 > 1:04:54"Who then disarm him of that weapon with which he tortured us
1:04:54 > 1:04:56"Stuff it into his mouth
1:04:56 > 1:04:59"Sew up his poetasting lips around it
1:04:59 > 1:05:02"And blow out his brains."
1:05:05 > 1:05:08The poem, Arraignment, came into being
1:05:08 > 1:05:10not triggered by Plath's death,
1:05:10 > 1:05:15but because the final straw was the death of Assia.
1:05:15 > 1:05:17He was responsible.
1:05:17 > 1:05:19Certainly morally responsible.
1:05:19 > 1:05:24No-one was saying that he literally shoved her head in the oven.
1:05:24 > 1:05:26Some extraordinary allegations.
1:05:26 > 1:05:30If it had been published in Britain, Ted would have sued for libel,
1:05:30 > 1:05:31without a doubt.
1:05:31 > 1:05:34So, through the early 1970s,
1:05:34 > 1:05:40this ferment emerges where Ted is the demonic husband.
1:05:44 > 1:05:48There were groups of women who took it all on their own impetus
1:05:48 > 1:05:52to begin to pick at Hughes wherever he went,
1:05:52 > 1:05:56with lines on the signs from the poem.
1:05:56 > 1:05:59So, the poem turned into a sort of organising tool,
1:05:59 > 1:06:02which was not its intent, I assure you.
1:06:04 > 1:06:10I was appalled that something that happened in 1963
1:06:10 > 1:06:13could be carried forward,
1:06:13 > 1:06:19and what an easy way out for somebody to think,
1:06:19 > 1:06:24"Yes, we're right, we've got the real story,
1:06:24 > 1:06:26"we know what really happened,
1:06:26 > 1:06:29"and we're going to punish this complete stranger
1:06:29 > 1:06:31"for something we weren't around to witness,
1:06:31 > 1:06:34"we know nothing about, but we're the ones with the answer."
1:06:36 > 1:06:41He described those people as fantasists.
1:06:41 > 1:06:44You know, he described the issue around Sylvia Plath
1:06:44 > 1:06:48as a fantasia, and that people had fallen for that fantasia
1:06:48 > 1:06:50and were more interested in it,
1:06:50 > 1:06:54and needed it more than they needed the truth.
1:06:57 > 1:07:01For outsiders, because that's what they are, outsiders,
1:07:01 > 1:07:05to make judgments that affect somebody in their life,
1:07:05 > 1:07:06for all of their life,
1:07:06 > 1:07:10is a sort of horrible form of theft.
1:07:12 > 1:07:13It's an abuse.
1:07:17 > 1:07:22"Having to suffer watching that freestyle street theatre
1:07:22 > 1:07:25"presented and accepted and discussed
1:07:25 > 1:07:27"as the final truth about our lives,
1:07:27 > 1:07:32"and having to realise over the years that no mistake can be corrected,
1:07:32 > 1:07:34"no fantasy or lie can be extinguished,
1:07:34 > 1:07:37"and that any attempt to correct the record
1:07:37 > 1:07:40"only gives a weirder energy to the lies.
1:07:41 > 1:07:47"Having the monkey world of all this play among one's nerves for 25 years
1:07:47 > 1:07:49"induces a stupor of horror.
1:07:50 > 1:07:53"It finally affects your judgment of mankind."
1:07:56 > 1:08:01I think his keeping quiet and dealing with it in his own way
1:08:01 > 1:08:05really preserved something essential for him.
1:08:05 > 1:08:08I think, if he once started talking about it,
1:08:08 > 1:08:12it just would have been misinterpreted,
1:08:12 > 1:08:16it would have come back to haunt him, I think.
1:08:16 > 1:08:18I think he couldn't have done that.
1:08:19 > 1:08:27I just remember one really difficult day when I saw him cry.
1:08:27 > 1:08:29Somebody made him cry,
1:08:29 > 1:08:33and I felt that the world collapsed.
1:08:45 > 1:08:49"I stopped writing just over a year ago, and have entered a state since
1:08:49 > 1:08:53"that I thought I was too robust and sane to succumb to.
1:08:53 > 1:08:57"I am having to believe that my guardian angels,
1:08:57 > 1:08:59"who I always thought were on my side,
1:08:59 > 1:09:01"are now having a game with me."
1:09:04 > 1:09:09It felt as if, at the very least, Ted had gone undercover.
1:09:09 > 1:09:17You know, that his star maybe wasn't shining as brightly as before,
1:09:17 > 1:09:23and that's fine, you know, every writing career has its moments,
1:09:23 > 1:09:27better books, and all that kind of stuff.
1:09:27 > 1:09:30In the immediate aftermath of Crow,
1:09:30 > 1:09:36he's struggling to start a new big project -
1:09:36 > 1:09:40in some ways, went into a fairly rapid poetic decline
1:09:40 > 1:09:45in collections called Cave Birds and Prometheus on his Crag,
1:09:45 > 1:09:50becomes overblown, the poet as quasi-prophet.
1:09:50 > 1:09:55You could talk about Hughes suddenly using more masks and curtains
1:09:55 > 1:09:58and hiding behind characters,
1:09:58 > 1:10:02and becoming a fugitive in his work.
1:10:17 > 1:10:22Australia, writers' week, press conference, Ted Hughes,
1:10:22 > 1:10:25which was interrupted by the Femme Fascists,
1:10:25 > 1:10:27as they were labelled,
1:10:27 > 1:10:29the Sylvia crowd,
1:10:29 > 1:10:32who heckled and spat at Ted,
1:10:32 > 1:10:35and of course, he could not speak a word
1:10:35 > 1:10:39in front of all the photographers and the news people I'd arranged,
1:10:39 > 1:10:42so we walked into the cool of the hotel,
1:10:42 > 1:10:46and he just looked at me and he said, "You look very tired.
1:10:46 > 1:10:49"Would you like to take a nap in my bed?"
1:10:49 > 1:10:52And that's how our love really started.
1:10:54 > 1:10:58I just thought, "What a kind man, and he's not a wolf."
1:10:58 > 1:11:02What I did was I cheered him up.
1:11:02 > 1:11:05I think he was actually very depressed at that time,
1:11:05 > 1:11:07and there was something about her bubbly energy,
1:11:07 > 1:11:11her light, her life and its association with Australia
1:11:11 > 1:11:14and newness that really did reinvigorate him,
1:11:14 > 1:11:20and in the late 1970s, his poetic muse seems to come back on track.
1:11:20 > 1:11:24He was vulnerable to women, there's no question about that.
1:11:24 > 1:11:29In some way, it was connected to work,
1:11:29 > 1:11:30I noticed.
1:11:30 > 1:11:34He was just looking for the muse figure
1:11:34 > 1:11:38who would help trigger the next poem, really.
1:11:38 > 1:11:40I was his muse.
1:11:40 > 1:11:45In fact, he said as much in my hearing to Robert Graves,
1:11:45 > 1:11:48the writer of The White Goddess,
1:11:48 > 1:11:51it was a fabulous moment for me to hear that.
1:11:51 > 1:11:55He'd written his most erotic poem about me,
1:11:55 > 1:11:57and so this is it.
1:11:59 > 1:12:00"As you bend to touch
1:12:00 > 1:12:01"The gypsy girl
1:12:01 > 1:12:03"Who waits for you in the hedge
1:12:03 > 1:12:05"Her loose dress falls open.
1:12:05 > 1:12:07"Midsummer ditch-sickness!
1:12:09 > 1:12:11"Flushed, freckled with earth-fever
1:12:11 > 1:12:13"Swollen lips parted, her eyes closing,
1:12:13 > 1:12:17"A lolling armful, and so young! Hot."
1:12:21 > 1:12:27I mean, we would never dream of tackling him on his infidelities.
1:12:27 > 1:12:29I mean, it was his life.
1:12:29 > 1:12:32That's what he was living,
1:12:32 > 1:12:34and it was up to him.
1:12:36 > 1:12:39It was almost as though he had two personalities.
1:12:39 > 1:12:43One part of his life was nothing to do with anybody else,
1:12:43 > 1:12:46and there was another side,
1:12:46 > 1:12:48which was the family side.
1:12:48 > 1:12:51The two sort of didn't meet... didn't seem to meet.
1:13:04 > 1:13:07I bought Gaudete in a bookshop in Huddersfield,
1:13:07 > 1:13:11and I didn't really know what it was.
1:13:11 > 1:13:13The Anglican Minister,
1:13:13 > 1:13:17he's abducted into the spirit world
1:13:17 > 1:13:22because the spirits have some purpose for Nicholas,
1:13:22 > 1:13:25and while he's being taken away,
1:13:25 > 1:13:27they send a double.
1:13:27 > 1:13:32This doppelganger interprets the ministry of God's love
1:13:32 > 1:13:34quite literally -
1:13:34 > 1:13:40he's out there, making love to all the women of the parish.
1:13:40 > 1:13:43There's an incredible scene in a hut
1:13:43 > 1:13:48where the sexual act is taking place
1:13:48 > 1:13:54in and amongst all these ferrets spilling out of various cages.
1:13:54 > 1:13:58The figure of the reverend in Gaudete
1:13:58 > 1:14:00is clearly related to Hughes.
1:14:00 > 1:14:04That is a difficult book to like.
1:14:04 > 1:14:08I think he was trying to write something out of his system.
1:14:14 > 1:14:18But he included with it a series of epilogue poems
1:14:18 > 1:14:20in a completely different voice.
1:14:20 > 1:14:24These were quiet, reflective, emotional poems.
1:14:24 > 1:14:25In these poems, he addresses a lost female.
1:14:25 > 1:14:34They become like elegies to dead women whom he has loved.
1:14:37 > 1:14:40"I turned, I bowed in the morgue
1:14:41 > 1:14:43"I kissed your temples
1:14:43 > 1:14:45"Refrigerated
1:14:45 > 1:14:48"Glazed as rained on graveyard marble
1:14:49 > 1:14:51"My lips queasy
1:14:51 > 1:14:54"Heart non-existent
1:14:54 > 1:14:58"Straightened into some darkness like a pillar over Athens."
1:15:14 > 1:15:19that this was somebody writing from the heart.
1:15:19 > 1:15:23The poems felt sincere.
1:15:23 > 1:15:26I think that's what people responded to.
1:15:41 > 1:15:45So, his next major collection is called Remains Of Elmet.
1:15:45 > 1:15:51Elmet was the old legendary name for his district of Yorkshire,
1:15:51 > 1:15:52the Calder Valley.
1:15:52 > 1:15:55He writes a beautiful sequence of poems,
1:15:55 > 1:15:57I think his most underrated book,
1:15:57 > 1:16:02about the decay of the community that he grew up in,
1:16:02 > 1:16:07but also they're poems of memory about childhood.
1:16:09 > 1:16:13In the middle of it, there's a big graveyard,
1:16:13 > 1:16:17which was the graveyard for the whole southern south-western corner
1:16:17 > 1:16:18of Yorkshire.
1:16:18 > 1:16:20Here's the one about the...
1:16:20 > 1:16:23this graveyard full of bodies,
1:16:23 > 1:16:25which has all the...
1:16:25 > 1:16:27all the graves of my mother's family in it.
1:16:31 > 1:16:35"You claw your way over a giant beating wing
1:16:36 > 1:16:41"And Thomas and Walter and Edith are living feathers
1:16:41 > 1:16:45"Esther and Sylvia, living feathers.
1:16:45 > 1:16:48"Where all the horizons lift wings
1:16:48 > 1:17:01"A family of dark swans
1:17:01 > 1:17:12is the archaeology of all Ted's later writing.
1:17:12 > 1:17:16and towards the light, and I think in Remains Of Elmet,
1:17:16 > 1:17:22you can trace that journey towards a form of ecstasy and epiphany.
1:17:30 > 1:17:33When I saw the poetry syllabus for my O-Levels,
1:17:33 > 1:17:37and my mother and father were both on it...
1:17:39 > 1:17:42..I remember asking a couple of my friends
1:17:42 > 1:17:44how they'd feel if their parents were on it
1:17:44 > 1:17:47and they couldn't put themselves in that place,
1:17:47 > 1:17:52so I telephoned my father and said,
1:17:52 > 1:17:54"I have a bit of a problem,
1:17:54 > 1:18:00"because you're on my syllabus," and he said, "That's marvellous!
1:18:00 > 1:18:03"I can tell you what I meant.
1:18:03 > 1:18:06"We can go through the poems together."
1:18:06 > 1:18:09I said, "But my mother's on the syllabus too."
1:18:09 > 1:18:11He said, "Yes, I know all about her work,
1:18:11 > 1:18:15"I can tell you what she meant and I can..."
1:18:15 > 1:18:19I said, "OK, this is my problem."
1:18:19 > 1:18:23I said, "If you tell me what you meant,
1:18:23 > 1:18:25"actually, the examiners might disagree with you,
1:18:25 > 1:18:27"and then they're going to fail me.
1:18:27 > 1:18:30"What if I say, 'But I got it straight from the horse's mouth!
1:18:30 > 1:18:32"'In fact I live with the horse!'
1:18:32 > 1:18:37"And, um...then if you don't help me,
1:18:37 > 1:18:39"they're going to think you did anyway.
1:18:39 > 1:18:41"I actually can't win."
1:18:42 > 1:18:46In 1979 or 1980,
1:18:46 > 1:18:49we came on a school trip to this cinema
1:18:49 > 1:18:53to hear Ted Hughes reading his poems.
1:18:53 > 1:18:56We were studying the poems at school for exams,
1:18:56 > 1:18:59and I remember him coming onto stage.
1:18:59 > 1:19:02He sort of shuffled on in that corner,
1:19:02 > 1:19:06brought his own seat to sit on,
1:19:06 > 1:19:09and there was no ceremony, no introduction,
1:19:09 > 1:19:11and I even wondered if he was the caretaker.
1:19:11 > 1:19:16He sat down and with this incredible voice,
1:19:16 > 1:19:22sort of low intensity, started reading the work.
1:19:22 > 1:19:24I don't think there's any doubt that
1:19:24 > 1:19:29if it hadn't have been for Ted's work, I wouldn't be writing.
1:19:29 > 1:19:32I didn't know that the world was such an interesting place,
1:19:32 > 1:19:34and I certainly didn't know you could contain it
1:19:34 > 1:19:36in these little blocks of language.
1:19:36 > 1:19:40I'd only seen language as information before.
1:19:40 > 1:19:43This was language with a different dimension,
1:19:43 > 1:19:45a completely different dimension.
1:19:45 > 1:19:50I mean, the people who still disliked him still disliked him.
1:19:50 > 1:19:54Nevertheless, being so remarkable a poet,
1:19:54 > 1:19:59he just won over the hearts of all people who loved poetry,
1:19:59 > 1:20:02and there were more in the country than you always realise.
1:20:02 > 1:20:07People forgave him much more easily as a result.
1:20:07 > 1:20:10The new poet laureate is Ted Hughes,
1:20:10 > 1:20:13filling the gap left by the death of Sir John Betjeman seven months ago.
1:20:13 > 1:20:16Mr Hughes, a Yorkshire lad who went to Cambridge,
1:20:16 > 1:20:19was the youngest of the handful who'd been tipped for the post.
1:20:19 > 1:20:21He first came to prominence in the '50s
1:20:21 > 1:20:23and won many prizes with his work,
1:20:23 > 1:20:27described by one critic as being totally without sentimentality
1:20:27 > 1:20:29and of forceful roughness.
1:20:29 > 1:20:31Have you any feeling at all
1:20:31 > 1:20:33that the appointment might be an outmoded one,
1:20:33 > 1:20:36perhaps old-fashioned, in this televisual era? No, no.
1:20:36 > 1:20:37I think it's...
1:20:39 > 1:20:43Well, it depends what you think of the Queen or the Crown, rather.
1:20:45 > 1:20:47Is the Crown outmoded?
1:20:48 > 1:20:52To me, the Crown is the symbol of, you know,
1:20:52 > 1:20:54the unity of the tribe,
1:20:54 > 1:20:57the spiritual unity of the tribe anyway,
1:20:57 > 1:21:02and so, when that's outmoded, then the laureate is outmoded.
1:21:02 > 1:21:06In some sense, the poet becomes the guardian
1:21:06 > 1:21:09of the spirit of the language of the tribe,
1:21:09 > 1:21:12and so the essential soul of the tribe,
1:21:12 > 1:21:16so the poet has this duty to perform
1:21:16 > 1:21:21in order to keep the spirit of the tribe alive.
1:21:21 > 1:21:25In poetry were all sorts of salvation,
1:21:25 > 1:21:28and that's why he took on children's poetry,
1:21:28 > 1:21:31ran children's competitions in the Daily Mirror, I think it was,
1:21:31 > 1:21:36because he was convinced that by learning poetry,
1:21:36 > 1:21:39by learning to write poetry and by caring about it,
1:21:39 > 1:21:42you could fulfil yourself fully and totally as a human being.
1:21:42 > 1:21:44This was his religion.
1:21:44 > 1:21:47He believed in it, he thought it would change the world.
1:22:05 > 1:22:08If my father had not had fishing,
1:22:08 > 1:22:13if he'd not had that peace where he could go and be alone,
1:22:13 > 1:22:16how might he have coped with the life that he goes back to?
1:22:33 > 1:22:37I came up here a few times with him. The first time, we fished...
1:22:37 > 1:22:39Oh, I just had a bite, I can't believe that!
1:22:43 > 1:22:46Fishing is like plumbing the mysteries of the world.
1:22:46 > 1:22:48It's an absolute epiphany,
1:22:48 > 1:22:52that this mysterious creature comes from the bottom of the river
1:22:52 > 1:22:54and takes your fly.
1:22:55 > 1:22:59You're trying constantly to adjust, like you are to life,
1:22:59 > 1:23:02and it becomes then a kind of model for how you live your life.
1:23:04 > 1:23:08I think that the tragedies that ensued from his indiscretions
1:23:08 > 1:23:11did teach him a lesson,
1:23:11 > 1:23:13but I think at the same time,
1:23:13 > 1:23:17it was like being addicted to a drug.
1:23:17 > 1:23:21He liked the regularity of married life,
1:23:21 > 1:23:26but he also wanted the inspiration of new relationships.
1:23:28 > 1:23:30"This actually was the love act
1:23:30 > 1:23:33"That had brought them out of everywhere
1:23:33 > 1:23:35"Squirming and leaping
1:23:35 > 1:23:38"And that had brought us too
1:23:38 > 1:23:40"Besotted voyeurs
1:23:40 > 1:23:43"Trying to hook ourselves into it
1:23:43 > 1:23:48"And all giddy orgasm of the river, quaking under our feet."
1:23:50 > 1:23:55Ted told me one time, sitting around the campfire having a Scotch,
1:23:55 > 1:23:58having had a great day on the river,
1:23:58 > 1:24:00he said by the time you hit 60,
1:24:00 > 1:24:03you think, "What else is there?"
1:24:03 > 1:24:07Have I used my time well?
1:24:07 > 1:24:10He felt that life was closing in on him.
1:24:10 > 1:24:13When he felt that his creative energies were going down,
1:24:13 > 1:24:18when the passion was gone, I think he was, in a funny sort of way,
1:24:18 > 1:24:22fearful that it might infect his creative ability.
1:24:36 > 1:24:39Late on, you get these two books,
1:24:39 > 1:24:44which suddenly put him right back in the centre.
1:24:44 > 1:24:48It got an incredible amount of praise and critical attention
1:24:48 > 1:24:50for different reasons,
1:24:50 > 1:24:53but largely because it felt as if,
1:24:53 > 1:24:57you know, Ted was back, in some ways.
1:24:57 > 1:25:02You know, with poems, with writing that was as strong
1:25:02 > 1:25:04and as powerful and as energised,
1:25:04 > 1:25:09and as important as anything that he'd written before.
1:25:09 > 1:25:14Usually, you know, they just expect us to fade out.
1:25:32 > 1:25:34I do remember him saying,
1:25:34 > 1:25:37as soon as you tell somebody you've got an illness,
1:25:37 > 1:25:40something like cancer, they write you off, and I suppose you do.
1:25:40 > 1:25:43You look at people differently
1:25:43 > 1:25:46when you know that they're on the way out, basically.
1:25:46 > 1:25:48You don't know how long they have got left.
1:25:48 > 1:25:51Then, um...
1:25:51 > 1:25:54a sadness descends on everybody.
1:25:54 > 1:25:58I think that's probably why he kept it quiet.
1:25:58 > 1:26:02The old Ted was like someone on parole
1:26:02 > 1:26:08from some purgatorial ordeal to which he had been condemned.
1:26:08 > 1:26:11The important poems that a poet writes
1:26:11 > 1:26:13are to heal the wounds,
1:26:13 > 1:26:18and the wounds come from your own folly,
1:26:18 > 1:26:23and he was more wounded throughout his life by folly.
1:26:25 > 1:26:28There was a moment in Ted Hughes's life where he said,
1:26:28 > 1:26:34"I hope that everyone has the right to own the facts of their own life."
1:26:34 > 1:26:36In many ways, the most tragic,
1:26:36 > 1:26:39the saddest words in the English language
1:26:39 > 1:26:40are "too late",
1:26:40 > 1:26:44and it was too late that he came to publish
1:26:44 > 1:26:47his poems about his life with Sylvia Plath.
1:26:47 > 1:26:51Nine months after he published them, he was dead. That's a tragedy.
1:27:13 > 1:27:17We have come to Poets' Corner where the word is celebrated.
1:27:32 > 1:27:39I always think the line that Ted put on Sylvia's headstone
1:27:39 > 1:27:44says what he makes out of it,
1:27:44 > 1:27:48that even in these horrific fires,
1:27:48 > 1:27:52the lotus can bloom, you know,
1:27:52 > 1:27:55something extraordinary can come out of it.
1:27:55 > 1:27:59I think both Sylvia and Ted did that.
1:28:00 > 1:28:06They made something astounding out of this horrific tragedy.
1:28:07 > 1:28:11I kept everything that he ever wrote to me.
1:28:11 > 1:28:14In fact, there's a poem in one of my books about that.
1:28:14 > 1:28:18I'll see if I can remember, it's only a little short one.
1:28:18 > 1:28:20"There's no justice I can do
1:28:20 > 1:28:21"To the memory of you
1:28:21 > 1:28:25"Your letters speak as clearly to me now
1:28:25 > 1:28:27"As they did when written
1:28:27 > 1:28:30"Bookbound, they may illuminate
1:28:30 > 1:28:32"The father that you were
1:28:32 > 1:28:33"So others see
1:28:33 > 1:28:35"The loss you are to me."