Birthday Letters: Rave reviews

The collection chronicled his stormy marriage to the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 aged 30.

The Poet Laureate died on Wednesday aged 68 after an 18-month battle with cancer.

Extracts from Birthday Letters

St. Botolph's is about their first meeting, Cambridge University in 1956.

First sight. First snapshot isolated
Unalterable, stilled in the camera's glare.
Taller
Than you ever were again.
Swaying so slender
It seemed your long, perfect, American legs
Simply went on up.
That flaring hand,
Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant fingers.
And the face - a tight ball of joy.
I see you there, clearer, more real Than in any of the years in its shadow - As if I saw you that once, then never again.

18 Rugby Street recalls the time Sylvia Plath visited Ted Hughes in London in April 1956.