Born in 1930 in Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, Ted Hughes came up to Pembroke in 1951 to study English. He transferred to Archaeology and Anthropology in his third year. In June 1956 he married the American poet Sylvia Plath, who took her own life in 1963. They had 2 children, Frieda Rebecca and Nicholas Farrar (1962-2009). In the summer of 1962, Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill, with whom he would have a daughter, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura). Wevill took her own life and that of their daughter Shura in March 1969. In August 1970 he married Carol Orchard, who survives him. Most well-known as a poet, Hughes was also a translator, dramatist, children's writer and environmentalist, being one of the original trustees of the Westcountry Rivers Trust. He was awarded an OBE in 1977 and was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984, holding the office until his death in 1998. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Hughes was a very close friend of Cooke's and they regularly fished together as well as collaborating on a number of projects.