We tend to think of Keats as a rarefied and unworldly figure, a man devoted to “pure beauty”, said Claire Harman in the London Evening Standard. Lucasta Miller, in her fascinating new book, suggests that this picture is highly misleading. Keats, she claims, was a “fully embodied” young man who was as “greedy for sensation” as for roast beef sandwiches (which he craved a “dozen or two” at a time). In matters of love, he “was more laddish and opportunistic than courtly”: he visited prostitutes (almost certainly catching syphilis as a result) and could be “selfish and cruel”, even towards his great love, Fanny Brawne. Miller guides us through nine of his most famous poems, carefully unpicking their ideas and imagery, while “giving the story of his life a shake-up at the same time”. It’s a “really useful” idea for a book – and one that yields some fascinating interpretations.
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