If you were a children’s artist looking for a poet who could craft some
narrative verses for your new book, you would gladly have settled for Ted
Hughes. This is just what a young art graduate called Jim Downer did more
than half a century ago, when they were sharing a house in London. After
they moved on, Hughes kept the pictures, married Sylvia Plath, went to
America, and embarked on his life of professional triumph and personal
tragedy. Eventually the two men lost contact, and Downer assumed Hughes had
never got round to doing the stanzas. Until now, 11 years after Hughes’s
death, with the book springing from his estate fully formed. It is called Timmy
the Tug, with the story of a little boat’s heroism told in a set of 33
characteristically robust verses by the late Laureate, with Downer’s bright
postwar illustrations.
» full story
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