Born in suburban Middlesex in 1931, the poet and classical scholar Peter Levi is somewhat forgotten today, which is a shame. His father, Bert Levi, had Sephardic ancestors who sold carpets in Constantinople. In 1928 his devoutly Catholic mother, Mollie, had persuaded Bert to convert. So at Peter’s birth, there was officially no Jewish blood left in the Levi family; all trace of Sephardic Judaism was gone. Levi’s favourite poets were nevertheless usually foreign, chief among them Yevgenii Yevtushenko (whom he translated), Paul Valéry and George Seferis. A snuff-taking, dandyish figure, he was attractive to both men and women. “Some people assumed he must be either a homosexual or a womaniser in priest’s clothing,” Brigid Allen writes in this crisp, well