Mad, bad and dangerous to know

Yesterday's book was a very slim volume, Byron: [the] Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition Guide. This accompanied an exhibition held in 1974 illustrating the poet's life. The wording of the guide is allusive rather than direct and sometimes unintentionally comic. "His career, " it states, "was unusually rich in other directions, social, amatory and political ..." His "amatory career" was not so much rich as heroic! Later the guide coyly refers to "his half-sister, Augusta, who was to figure so importantly in his later life" - yes, as his incestuous lover, if rumours are to be believed.

Would Byron have been as famous as a poet if he had not also been the ultimate of bad boys, a rock star figure from the 19th century? Here's some more information.

Day 237; Book 228