Quotes from Douglas Botting

Animals, Gerald felt by instinct, were his equals, no matter how small, or ugly, or undistinguished; they were, at a level beyond the merely sentimental, his friends and companions - often his only ones, for he had no great rapport with other children. And the animals, in their turn, sensed this, and responded accordingly, not just when he was a boy on Corfu but throughout all the years of his life.

She went to the house and lit a candle. The candle cried: 'I am being killed.' The flame: 'I am killing you.' The maid answered: 'It is true, true. For I see your white blood.' Meanwhile

I treated women as human beings, which is of course fatal.

As Hughes observed at first hand, the brothers were both serious men of similar temperament, always mischievous, for ever laughing, but where Larry was ultimately a dazzlingly clever man without faith of any kind, Gerry was a simple man of unshakeable conviction.