Seven of literature's lustiest lovers

“How peaceful life would be without love,” wrote Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose, “how safe. How tranquil. And how dull”. Endless books have been written about love – finding it, managing it, controlling it, escaping from it... But what about lust? It’s a hulking, sulking emotion, smirking from the corner of our brains. Let’s have a little look at some of literature's lustiest characters.

Tom Jones in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

Henry Fielding, in the lust-fest that is The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, talks about “the glorious lust of doing good” but in the meantime, manages to squash in a fair bit of the other kind as well. Fielding describes what is “commonly called love”, as being, in reality, good old-fashioned lust, or “a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh… This is indeed more properly hunger”. Sounds more like cannibalism but we take the point.

Max Beesley takes the lead, with John Sessions as Henry James, in the BBC's 1997 adaptation of Tom Jones

The Summoner in The Canterbury Tales (1478)

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are jam-packed with lust. The Wife of Bath says her lusty feelings are all the fault of the gods while the Miller’s Wife focuses entirely on sexual rivalry. The Summoner, meanwhile, abuses his position: “He had the young wenches of the diocese under control, at his own wish, and knew their secrets, and was their sole advisor.” We’re amazed they got to Canterbury, frankly.

Lydia and Kitty Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Surely the quivering fans and arched eyebrows of Jane Austen’s work wouldn’t descend to lust? Generally, they don’t. A gentleman’s £13,000 a year and home in Hampshire seems to set more hearts beating than a well-turned leg, but that’s until we get to Lydia and Kitty Bennett, who are SHAMELESS in their lusty following of the Meryton garrison. If you squint through Austen’s disapproving but very funny descriptions of their incredibly unsubtle attempts to attract the attentions of Wickham et al, we see two young girls basically following a boy band around and screaming “get them off”.

The senior demon Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters (1942)

CS Lewis works his way through the deadly sins in The Screwtape Letters, and is particularly savage about lust, describing young male desire as having a dark side that requires a partner in sin. “the felt evil is what he wants; it is that 'tang' in the flavour which he is after. In the face, it is the visible animality, or sulkiness, or craft, or cruelty which he likes, and in the body, something quite different from what he ordinarily calls Beauty...”

Colin Firth, an object of lust in the 1995 TV version of Pride and Prejudice

Pop Larkin in The Darling Buds of May (1958)

The Larkins, in HE Bates’ The Darling Buds of May, are no strangers to lust, but there’s no shame here. It’s happy, healthy and you’re never too old for it (which is what led TV viewers to the startling sight of David Jason as Pop Larkin drinking champagne in the bath with Ma in the television adaptation). Whether it’s Mariette putting poor Charley off his tax return with her seductive glances or Pop Larkin cheering the lovelorn of the village up with a few cocktails and a cuddle, lust is in the air.

Alexander Portnoy in Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)

We're heavily into religious guilt territory here. Philip Roth's anti-hero, Alexander Portnoy, is a textbook case of the self-perpetuating cycle of lust and guilt creating more lust and more guilt. His obsession with his sexual partner “the Monkey”, his horror at his own behaviour, his desire to control his own lustful thoughts, make this one of the cruellest and funniest novels of the 20th Century. Every adolescent should read it. As they also should read...

Adrian Mole in The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984)

“I allowed Pandora to visit me in my darkened bedroom. We had a brilliant kissing session. Pandora was wearing her mother's Janet Reger full-length silk slip under her dress and she allowed me to touch the lace on the hem. I was more interested in the lace near the shoulder straps, but Pandora said, 'No darling, we must wait until we've got our O-levels'.” Do we need to say any more? In between measuring his “thing” and writing lustful poetry to Pandora with the odd political reference thrown in to try and seduce her with his current affairs knowledge, it’s amazing poor Adrian got any O-levels at all.

Plain, straightforward, uncomplicated, tingly, exciting: lust. As Sylvia Plath said, “If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.” When we’re in the throes of true lust it can feel like madness, as American satirist Joe Queenan discovers in the Seriously... podcast A Brief History of Lust, which you can download now.