Sweet Poison takes its title from a line in King John: "Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth". It refers not only to the fact that the central character dies of poison, thought to be self-administered, but also to the fact that this character is a man obsessed with the past. Augustus Gale was a man in love - in love with a woman of genius who had been dead for over a century. This macabre devotion poisoned both his own life and the lives...