Ted Hughes to take his place at Poets' Corner

The late Ted Hughes is to receive his place at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey at a ceremony in London later.

A memorial stone will bear his name and lines from one of his poems. It will sit at the foot of the stone commemorating his publisher, TS Eliot.

Hughes' widow Carol and daughter Frieda are expected to attend the ceremony for the writer, who died in 1998.

The Yorkshireman's friend and fellow poet Seamus Heaney will give a reading at the event.

"I think Ted would be utterly honoured to be at the foot of TS Eliot and he would indeed be honoured to be in the corner," Heaney told BBC News.

"He was a poet of England and though he may not have been as conventional a member of the Anglican church as TS Elliot was, he had basically a religious vision so he would be very happy to be in the Abbey.

So we found the end of our journey, So we stood alive in the river of light, Among the creatures of light, creatures of light”

"I think it's what he deserves, it's his due. Thinking of the other poets who are there, there's a memorial to the First World War poets who meant everything to him.

"Also, there's a memorial to Sir John Betjeman - a previous Poet Laureate, there's a memorial to John Clare who was a nature poet and a memorial to William Blake - a visionary. I think Ted is at home in that company."

Speaking of his friend's death more than a decade ago, the writer added: "I think we've lost a patriot, visionary English poet. And a great poet."

It was announced last year that Hughes would be honoured in Poets' Corner but the exact location was not known until last month.

The writer died aged 68, just months after his last collection of poems, Birthday Letters, was published.

Poet Seamus Heaney told the BBC's Will Gompertz that his friend, Ted Hughes, deserved a place at Poets' Corner

The poems were about his first marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath, who killed herself in 1963 after they split up.

A letter Hughes wrote to her in 1956 has been chosen as one of the readings at the ceremony.

His first book of poems, Hawk in the Rain, won critical acclaim upon its release in 1957. He became Poet Laureate in 1984 and remained in the post until his death from cancer in 1998.

Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield and Alfred Lord Tennyson are among the writers buried in the Abbey.