Money and Make-Believe is a frank and probing collection of emblematic poems interspersed with Hughes' responses to the reportage assignments he undertook as a press photographer in the north of England. During these encounters, he bore witness to society’s victims.
For Hughes, giving up poverty is like giving up cigarettes, an old lady at the police station is left waiting ‘like a tap dripping in a darkened room’; and a pre-pubescent girl who has been raped is ‘a diminished thing tarnished by the smallest of nouns.’
The poems are like isolated mood chambers or broken urns where memory spills out. However, the foreboding, darker elements are counterpointed by dualistic poetry full of joy, beauty, and ritualistic defiance, where the masks of reality are confronted and positive glimpses of salvation are salvaged.

‘storm the heavens for an answer,
nurse my body closer,
cupping my hands into yours,
bear my spirit further through my bewilderment,
your secret faith going back into the night
down dusty lanes to lie my body
in the duskiness of our room,
over and over
washing your flesh through my aching shores.’
extract from Drinking on the Balcony