Tag Archives: Friends

Who Do You Love?

A recent report from the sometimes murky book world shows how fascinated journalists and researchers are about the love lives of writers.

The poet T. S. Eliot had an unhappy first marriage, which he credited with having inspired him to write The Waste Land.

His second marriage was happier, but this hasn’t stopped speculation about his love life. Princeton University Library has made a collection of 1,000 of Eliot’s letters available to researchers. Some were sent to a woman he declared to be his muse, but who he denied was ever his lover.

https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/t-s-eliot-letters-emily-hale-princeton.html?sid=5876011e8cc2b274058b4735&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=traffic&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=TheAngle

This made me wonder about what researchers would make of my love life, should I ever achieve any fame from my books. With emails, one’s outpourings are permanently available…they’re never truly deleted:

https://www.dailydot.com/society/how-to-delete-secure-email/

There are no clues to my love affairs in the dedications of my five completed Cornish Detective novels, which are to six female friends and one male friend. All were supportive to me while writing.

Who do you love?

Will researchers be able to tell?

C. S. Lewis wrote a charming dedication to his goddaughter, Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/aug/01/lion-witch-lucy-lucy-and-lucy-barfield-edinburgh-festival-cs-lewis