The green and the gold - Christopher Peachment

'It is God's curse that I carry this sex desire for a woman, for when I have one, she is no sooner had than hated.'

In this playful historical novel, Peachment follows the life of Andrew Marvell - spy, politician, beguiling seventeenth-century poet and writer of 'To his Coy Mistress', one of the most famous love poems of all time.

In his metaphysical poetry Marvell lyrically captures every aspect of love. Yet, ironically, the man himself was a solitary figure whose reflections and tremendous insight allowed beauty to flourish from an otherwise lonely existence.

Peachment's Marvell allows us to witness those aspects of his existence that we could never glean from history alone, as we follow him through his childhood, his travels in Europe and Russia, his deepening sorrow over the trauma of the Civil War, and his endless battle between his suspicion of women and his yearning for them. His unlikely friendship with the Earl of Rochester, the Restoration rake and poet, turns his poetry from lyric to embittered satire, and finally confirms for him the fallen nature of man.