George Gordon Byron was lame from birth — and spent his whole life turning his flaws into legend. Beauty, scandal-maker, lover, exile, poet. He died at thirty-six in Greece, where he had gone to fight for the country's independence.
He was born in 1788, to a father who was a captain and had squandered everything, and a wilful Scottish mother. At ten he inherited a lord's title. At nineteen came his first collection of verse — and a demolition in the Edinburgh Review. Byron answered with the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
Childe Harold, Manfred, Don Juan — heroes who fit no mold at all. The "Byronic hero" — dark, proud, disenchanted — became the archetype of the age.
The scandal over his sister, divorce, debts — and he left England for good. Italy, then Greece. He died of fever at Missolonghi. Greece counts him a national hero.