It is with great sadness that we report the peaceful death of Mark Hinchliffe on 14 November 2019 after a period of illness. Mark was Chair of the Elmet Trust and a wonderfully kind and generous supporter of Ted Hughes studies.
In his quiet and gentle manner he managed to maintain friendships with the Hughes family and all in the community of scholars and enthusiasts for the work and life of Ted Hughes. For twenty years Mark corresponded with Hughes following a schoolboy discovery of the poetry and two letters are included in Letters of Ted Hughes, from 1978 and 1996.
A collector of Hughes’s books and manuscripts, Mark was the obvious person to write about Hughes’s publication history for Ted Hughes in Context. A casual conversation with Mark would be followed a few days later by a copy of a rare document, sent from the sheer joy of sharing the power of Hughes’s work.
We shall all miss Mark’s quiet enthusiasm and the dignity of its sincerity. Hughes’s birthday dinners in Mytholmroyd will never be the same. Our condolences and thoughts go to Julie, who will know, as we cannot, how fortunate she has been to be married to our gracious and much missed friend.
Terry Gifford
Chair, Ted Hughes Society