New Poet Laureate

Ted Hughes is in his local pub in North Tawton where he reacts to his nomination as the new Poet Laureate and successor to the late Sir John Betjeman. The position is a royal appointment to write for the nation and dates to 1668 when poet and critic John Dryden first held the post under Charles II after the Restoration of the Monarchy for the sum of £100 per year and a case of wine. The annuity remains unchanged and subsequent monarchs keep with the tradition of the Laureateship.

Ted Hughes was born in Yorkshire and studied at Cambridge University from 1951. Here, he met and married American poet Sylvia Plath and after time in Boston, they set up at Court Green in North Tawton in Devon where this interviewed is filmed. Plath took her own life in 1963 after Hughes filed for separation. They inspired each other to write: Hughes The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Crow (1970) and Plath known for her only novel The Bell Jar (1963) and poems Ariel, Ode for Ted and The Moon and the Yew Tree. On Hughes’ death in 1998 his final tome Birthday Letters was published posthumously. Ted Hughes and Michael Morpurgo helped to set up the post of Children’s Poet Laureate with an industry-sponsored bursary.