From The Guardian: Ted Hughes was a domestic tyrant who issued a 'Draft Constitution' to his mistress, Assia Wewill, instructing her how to carry out household chores and look after his children, according to a new biography: A Lover of Unreason: The Biography of Assia WevillThe report continues: He banned her from staying in bed beyond 8am, ordered her to dress straight away and told her not to catch up on sleep. The two pages of typed instructions said that she should teach the children German, play with them for at least an hour a day and introduce at least one meal with 'a recipe we have never had before' on a weekly basis. Hughes made clear he had no intention of cooking 'except in emergencies'.
Wevill told friends the poet's lovemaking was so ferocious that 'in bed, he smells like a butcher'.
Hughes' better known affair was his tempestuous marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath, which ended with her suicide in 1963 after he had begun an affair with Wevill. Six years later Wevill herself committed suicide and took the life of their four-year-old daughter, Shura, after she discovered that Hughes was having an affair.
Other poets in love
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning
TS Eliot and Vivien Haigh-Wood
Dylan Thomas and Caitlin MacNamara
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