After a long relationship with his half-sister (leading to one...

After a long relationship with his half-sister (leading to one child), Lord Byron had affairs with actresses, married society women and many young men, so that by the age of 21, he had raging cases of gonorrhoea and syphilis. Love didn’t come in a triangle for Byron but something closer to a pentacle. His level of celebrity was mind-boggling, a ‘Byromania,’ akin to a Regency Elvis Mania, where the Byronic look was mimicked everywhere in mirrors, in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow. Essayist William Hazlitt wrote of Lord Byron that: in ‘slovenliness, abruptness and eccentricity… he… surpasses all his contemporaries.’ We snivelling, wretched critics are not worthy!