Transformations of Love

The most controversial episode in the life of the seventeenth-century virtuoso and diarist John Evelyn has always been his passionate, complex friendship with the Restoration maid of honour Margaret Blagge, afterwards Mrs Godolphin. His ''Life of Mrs Godolphin'', written after her early death in childbirth, exalted the friendship and represented her as effectively a saint. They saw their intense f...