Transformations of Love

John Evelyn ranks with his friend Samuel Pepys as one of the best loved of English diarists. He was a virtuoso: a man of letters and of science, highly intellectual and devoutly spiritual. This is an absorbing new study of the most controversial episode of his life: his passionate 'seraphic' friendship with Margaret Godolphin, a maid of honour at the Restoration court of Charles II. Was Evelyn in his way as much a sexual predator as the rakes he professed to despise, or does the episode provide an unexpected slant on contemporary spirituality? Set against the vivid background of the court and the great gardens of the time, Transformations of Love provides new insights into the sexual and spiritual worlds of early modern England.