The Latest Breaking News from Ted Hughes

A new stage adaptation of the award-winning novel about a grief-stricken family visited by a giant talking crow takes imaginative flight but never truly soars

Max Porter lost his father when he was just six years old. He has described his first book, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, as “a love letter to my dad”.

As part of Australian Poetry Month, the UK’s poet laureate shares his least favourite word and his most controversial pop culture opinion

Other lives: Poet and educator whose books transformed the teaching of poetry-writing in schools

Delve into the hypnotic world of lyrical literature

The poet laureate, who died a quarter of a century ago today, believed his Shakespeare fixation was almost fatal; his first wife, Sylvia Plath, was certainly the Titania to his Oberon. With his almost psychic connection to nature and a charisma so powerful that even the Queen was rumoured to…

As he turns 80, the prolific children’s author takes us on a tour of his Devon village, to talk about family bombshells, the burning of Joan of Arc – and finally getting a film adaptation he likes

The acclaimed writer will debut an original poem each Friday – becoming The Independent’s own resident poet

Wonder and gratitude drive a revelatory account of this vital summer visitor