The most glaring example is the chapter dealing with Byron's brief but intense friendship with the Shelleys on the shores of Lake Geneva in summer 1816. What lets this book down is MacCarthy's tendency to be summary: lining up the main players, putting them through their paces, and then returning them to their box without comment. However misguided, that act guaranteed the success of the countless biographies that have followed, which continue to speculate on their likely contents. It was in the grate of the fire in Murray's drawing-room that the manuscript of one of the biggest potential money-spinners in literary history was burnt shortly after Byron's death: his memoirs. Oh yes, and he wrote some of the greatest poetry in the language.įiona MacCarthy's biography is published by John Murray, a firm whose fortunes were built on Byron's early success. He kept a tame bear in his rooms at Cambridge (there were rules against dogs) had an affair with his half-sister Augusta and countless other liaisons with members of both sexes swam the Hellespont and the Tagus exiled himself from England when stories of his homosexual past leaked out and led his own army to the Greek War of Independence, where he died at 36. And who can begrudge such an extraordinary life its enduring fascination? Born with a club foot, Byron was the victim of what we would now call childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his nurse. Fiona MacCarthy's is the sixth biography to appear in as many years. Scandal and intrigue made Byron a star in his own lifetime – and in ours.

Byron by Fiona MacCarthy