"Bate’s account, then, gives the impression he has had access to two bits of communications which are not in the archive (an initial one from Olwyn Hughes elaborating on the “certain episode”, followed by a letter from Alvarez asking about the journals). His biography attributes to them evidence the archive does not hold. Olwyn Hughes’s letter of 9 June 1988 may indeed imply that she suspected Plath and Alvarez’s relationship to be different from that hitherto portrayed, but her letter details no grounds for the suspicion or for credence in Bate’s salacious vignette, and neither does Alvarez’s reply." William Wootten • Guardian "He also makes significant allegations about the centrality of Al Alvarez, the critic who helped to establish Hughes and Plath as harbingers of a new poetics and who may have been, Bate alleges, Plath’s final confidant and Wevill’s spurned lover." John McAuliffe • Irish Times " I am always happy for interested parties to consult me privately about my sources, especially if they do so before making assertions in the press." Jonathan Bate • Guardian

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