麻豆社

The writer and journalist Fintan O'Toole has been appointed Seamus Heaney's official biographer.

Mr O'Toole told the World at One that Heaney often used a fax machine "to send things that were instant, jokey often" and that his publishers kept one "long after they had gone out of fashion, largely for Seamus".

He now hopes to find some of these faxes as an important part of the poet's life story. But he added that the race is on to track them down "before they fade".

(Photo: Seamus Heaney and a fax machine. Credit: 麻豆社/Getty Images)