Mean Time (1993) is considered one of Duffy's strongest and most mature collections. Appearing three years after The Other Country, this book also addresses themes of place and identity, but the focus is more on relationships, both sexual and social, between people as well as on self-examination and personal insight. This collection won the 1993 Whitbread Award for Poetry.

The collection The Adoption Papers (1991), by poet Jackie Kay, explores themes similar to Duffy's in regard to childhood memories and events. These semiautobiographical poems concern a black baby's adoption by a white family and are written from the perspectives of three persons: the natural mother, the adoptive mother, and the child. Kay and Duffy have been partners for more than twenty years and are raising Duffy's daughter together.

Hugo Young's The Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher (1989) was a bestseller in Great...