Never date a poet. They’ll always do the dirty on you | Alex Clark

Even from beyond the grave, TS Eliot insists on getting the last word with his ‘muse’

In between the excellent things that the early days of 2020 have brought (Greta “Sharon” Thunberg) and the terrifying (incipient global warfare) comes one that seems oddly familiar.

Details of an intimate relationship from long ago surface, revealing a complicated picture: differences in the quality and strength of feeling of the participants, ruptures and renewals, the arrival of other attachments, a closeness strangely accompanied by the failure of mutual understanding. So far, so human. But then something less workaday: the presence and the protection of not merely celebrity but intellectual and artistic reputation.