John Martin is an Anglo-Irish writer who has investigated the mysterious and secret life of Daniel Defoe, the father of the English novel, whose books Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana have sold in vast numbers throughout the world for nearly three hundred years. He reveals for the first time the real life of a highly talented religious dissenter whose sometimes outwardly pious and holier than thou demeanour disguised another, different existence in the shadows. His complex life as journalist, government spy and secret 'Governor General' of the press, was paralleled by great personal confusion. A gay man, he was 'married' many times, with children by several women; he was always in debt; thirteen times arrested; Pilloried; and twice bankrupted. This book demonstrates that his secret life was stranger than those of the pirates, courtesans, pimps and murderers who crowd his pages.