“... I can’t make out. Either would please me.Judging from newspaper reports, the congregation at Ted Hughes’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey was an odd mixture, with a surprising number of old aristocratic biddies (the oldest being the Queen Mother), and society (the dead poet’s society, I suppose) well represented. It’s no secret that the Laureate ...”

“... Cassell’s Magazine in 1898. And the lead role has attracted all the dashers over the years, from Gerald du Maurier through John Barrymore and Ronald Colman to David Niven. I particularly enjoyed the Yorkshire TV series in the 1970s, with Anthony Valentine as a notably suave and sinister Raffles and Christopher Strauli as a frightened Bunny. The combination ...”

“... to them, but she had met T.S. Eliot, too, and there was Priestley and Philip Larkin and even Ted Hughes, to whom she’d taken a bit of a shine but who remained nonplussed in her presence. And it was because she had at that time read so little of what they had written that she could not find anything to say and they, of course, had not said much of interest ...”