The Problem With Lord Byron's Debauchery

In 1798, a lame, rough-mannered 10-year-old boy from Aberdeen called George Gordon Byron inherited a peerage, along with an abbey in Nottinghamshire, and grew up to be one of the most notorious Romantic poets of all time. He died two centuries ago this week, while taking part in the War of Independence of his beloved Greece. Byron’s father, “Mad Jack” Byron, provided a perfect role model for his dissolute, incestuous son. Having married a Marchioness and run through her fortune of £30,000, he escaped from his creditors to France, where he had an affair with his own sister and died, probably by suicide. Byron himself fell in love for the first time at the age of seven and suffered regular sexual assault at the hands of his nursemaid.