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Childish Loves completes Benjamin Markovits’s trilogy of Byron-inspired novels. In it, the narrator, Peter Sullivan, inherits manuscripts relating to the poet. As with Byron, Sullivan’s life is tarnished by whispers of an inappropriate liaison with a young boy. Markovits explores the issues around childhood and sexual awakening, innocence and attraction, both in the contemporary narrative and through flashbacks to a teenage Byron’s youthful encounters with a choirboy in Cambridge.

His well researched novels bring to life Byron and his circle. Imposture, the first novel in the trilogy, deals with Dr John Polidori, the tragic outsider during that creative summer in Geneva, whose ferocious jealousy of Byron drove him to commit suicide at a young age. The horrors of Byron’s marriage to Annabella Millbanke and allusions to a possible incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta, are revealed in A Quiet Adjustment.

Ben Markovits teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. His previous novels include The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter and Playing Days. Before taking up a writing career, he was a professional basketball player.

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