Super Infinite

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's CathedralÑand perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father's consent, struggled to feed a family of 10 children and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of sadness yet expressed in his verse electric joy and love.

From a standout scholar, a biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex and death. In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell embarks on a fleet-footed 'act of evangelism', showing us the many sides of Donne's extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words and his tempestuous Elizabeth timesÑunveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living.