This is the first of two podcasts arising from conversations recorded with Dr Mike Sweeting on the topic of Ted Hughes’s relationship with religion. Mike's observations included Hughes’s fascination with various pagan and occult beliefs - ranging from his engagement with the Goddess, his fascination with shamanism, and his lifelong practice of astrology - and his antipathy, stated on several occasions, to Christianity, despite having memorably declared that his favourite book was the Holy Bible. 

Mike is a committed Christian, and a former pastor, he is also a noted scholar of Ted Hughes, having completed a doctoral thesis at Durham University entitled ‘Patterns of Initiation in the Poetry of Ted Hughes 1970-1980’. One of the main themes of Mike’s thesis is the pervasive influence of shamanism in Hughes’s work from early animal poems such as The Jaguar  through to Gaudete. 

Mike is chair of the International Map Collectors’ Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and a council member of The Ted Hughes Society. He is an expert on mergers and acquisitions in business, and has chaired charities working in deprived parts of NE England, India and Romania. 

Books mentioned during the podcast inlude:

Hughes, Ted (1977) Gaudete. London: Faber & Faber.

__________ (1979) Moortown Diary. London: Faber & Faber.

__________ (1979) Remains of Elmet (with photrographs by Fay Godwin). London: Faber & Faber.

__________ (1992) Shakespeare and The Gooddess of Complete Being. London: Faber & Faber.

Lewis, C.S. (2017, originally 1956) Till We Have Faces: a myth retold. London: Harper One.

__________in Fox, Denton ed.(1968) Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. London: Prentice Hall.

The opening and closing music is from String Quartet No 14, opus 131, oerfomed by the Orion String Quartet. (The extract is reproduced under Creative Commons licence IMSLP: Creative Commons Atribution Non-commercial No Derivative 3.0.)

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