‘To read [Birthday Letters] is to experience the psychic equivalent of “the bends”. It takes you down to levels of pressure where the under- truths of sadness and endurance leave you gasping.’ Seamus Heaney, Irish Times

 

‘The language is like lava, its molten turmoils hardening into jagged shapes, still hot from the earth’s core … You must read them.’ John Carey, Sunday Times

 

‘The poems come dazzling out of the darkness, and they are not answers to his critics after all, or appeals for understanding, but tender and elegiac acts of remembrance.’ Nicci Gerrard, Observer

 

‘Even if it were possible to set aside its biographical value … its linguistic, technical and imaginative feats would guarantee its future. Hughes is one of the most important poets of the century and this is his greatest book.’ Andrew Motion, The Times