Valerie Eliot, the widow and literary executor of poet TS Eliot, has died aged 86 after a short illness.
Valerie Eliot was the second wife of the US-born Nobel literature laureate, whom she met in 1957 at publisher Faber Faber. He was a director, she a secretary. Friends said the marriage was a happy one despite the almost 40-year gap in their ages.
After Eliot’s death in 1965, Valerie became his executor, editing his poems and letters and steadfastly refusing to co-operate with would-be biographers in keeping with the poet’s last wishes. – (AP)