Super-Infinite: the Transformations of John Donne Katherine Rundell (Faber & Faber, £16.99)
ON 25 FEBRUARY 1601, the head of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was severed from his body. The execution took place in private, as a last request: the small number of witnesses who gathered in a stone courtyard of the Tower of London is not recorded. Could a poet have been among them? John Donne had become one of the men who knew Essex best, watching him across the table at the house of Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton, where Donne served as secretary. Egerton had entertained Essex first as a concerned mentor, trying to calm his rebellious excesses towards the ageing Elizabeth I; then as a permanent and reluctant host when charged with keeping him under house arrest.
Years later, Donne wrote
