Lord Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, achieved fame with Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and developed the defiant, self-dramatising figure later called the Byronic hero. His poetry, satire, relationships and political opinions made his private life inseparable from his literary reputation.

After leaving Britain in 1816, Byron lived in Switzerland and Italy before supporting the Greek struggle for independence. He died at Missolonghi in 1824 before taking the field, becoming an international symbol of Romantic rebellion and national liberation.

In Christopher Nicole’s Haggard’s Inheritance, With Roger now in thrall to the beautiful but dangerous Mina Favering, and Johnnie to the equally dangerous poet of the day: Lord Byron, things are never simple for those with the name of Haggard. In William Boyd’s The Romantic, Along the way he crosses paths with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley and witnesses the political and technological transformations of his century.