London - The late poet laureate Ted Hughes gained his second literary prize in two days yesterday when his last book, Birthday Letters, won the Whitbread Poetry Award.
Together with the winners in three other categories - best novel, first novel and biography - Birthday Letters now goes forward to compete for the £21,000 Whitbread Book of the Year award, which Hughes won last year with his translation of Tales From Ovid.
On Monday Birthday Letters, Hughes's account of his relationship with his late wife, Sylvia Plath, won the T.S. Eliot Prize, poetry's leading award.