Tub-thumping nationalism isn’t much use, these days, in the ongoing debate about where archives or indeed, artistic works, finally come to rest. Not only for the practical reason that often it’s simply a question of following the money, but also because it’s no lie to speak, when it comes to art and artists, of the global village. Art and the work of artists belongs to us all.

And yet there are some artists whose connection to their country, their land, can't be disputed: Ted Hughes was one of those. I have no complaint that many of his papers are beautifully cared for by Emory University in Atlanta, not least because this has meant that Hughes's work has become more widely known to an American audience.

But when he died, almost exactly ten years ago, his friend Seamus Heaney rightly called him “a guardian spirit of the land and language”. It’s fitting that a tranche of his archive should rest in the British Library.

Countless poets - published and unpublished, famous and less well-known - learned to look at the world around them because Hughes’s work did so powerfully, transparently, beautifully. He was the last Poet Laureate to occupy that position as a lifetime’s post, which was never a thankless task to him, but a true connection to the country that was a part of him. At this acquisition by the British Library, his widow, Carol Hughes remarked

“Ted was a man of these islands - their landscapes, rivers and wild places - and it is fitting that papers covering such an important part of his creative life should be deposited with such a prestigious institution here in Britain.”

This collection of papers includes the manuscript of Birthday Letters, Hughes’s collection of poems charting and exploring his relationship with his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath. Published just before his death, Birthday Letters offered a glimpse of the poet that had been kept hidden; to the scholars able to view it, the papers in the archive will reveal even more.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist