Charles Causley (1917-2003) bequeathed his papers to Special Collections at the University of Exeter. The university's archive focuses on writers associated with the South West of England: Daphne du Maurier, Ted Hughes, Agatha Christie, Patricia Beer, John Betjeman, Henry Williamson, Jack Clemo, and many others.Causley's papers include twenty letters from Siegfried Sassoon, and two from Sassoon's son George, the last (dated June 1975) encouraging Causley to write a biography of his father. Causley did a great deal to promote a poet who, in old age, felt himself to have been forgotten except as 'the man who knew Wilfred'. Sassoon showed more pride in having known Thomas Hardy, and confided to Causley his disappointment that his old friend Robert Graves had behaved presumptuously at a commemorative event in Hardy's honour. With an emphasis conveying the long history of love, anger, betrayal and competition between the two poets, Sassoon could not resist laying bare the extent of Graves's familiarity: '(He went to Max Gate once)'.
These letters to Causley have never been published or, until now, seen by scholars. I would be keen to hear from anyone who knows the whereabouts of the other side of the correspondence: the letters from Causley to Sassoon.