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Lead book review

Seamus Heaney’s letters confirm that he really was as nice as he seemed

Seamus Heaney’s letters are full of energy and joie de vivre, but a darker note persists as the pressure of celebrity grows, says Roy Foster

14 October 2023

9:00 AM

14 October 2023

9:00 AM

The Letters of Seamus Heaney Christopher Reid

Faber, pp.820, 40

Seamus Heaney wrote letters everywhere – waiting for his car to be repaired at a country garage, sitting over a glass or more of Paddy late at night, and above all in aeroplanes, ‘pacing the pages against the pilot as he takes us in to Heathrow or Shannon’, as he wrote to a friend in 1995.

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