“Before her death last week at the age of 86, Valerie Eliot had spent the previous half-century forbidding impertinent journalists and scholars from accessing her late husband TS Eliot’s private papers. Even his published work was out of bounds, leaving biographers like Peter Ackroyd obliged to get creative with paraphrase rather than being able to quote directly. It was, said Mrs Eliot firmly, what Tom would have wanted.”