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0:43

Hello, Tom Holland here. This is

0:45

just to warn you that this

0:47

episode contains sexually sensitive

0:50

content. So please do be

0:52

warned. But don't necessarily be put off

0:54

listening to it for that reason. I

1:07

was 14 when I heard of his

1:09

death. It seemed an

1:11

awful calamity. I remember

1:13

I rushed out of doors, sat

1:15

down by myself, shouted aloud, and

1:19

wrote on the sandstone, Byron

1:22

is dead. So

1:25

that was Alfred Lord Tennyson, the author

1:27

of The Charge of the Light Brigade, poet

1:30

laureate of the United Kingdom in

1:32

the 19th century. And Tennyson is

1:34

remembering the moment when one

1:37

of his great heroes, Lord

1:39

Byron, died at Misalongi

1:42

on the 19th of April, 1824. Two

1:45

hundred years ago, Tom. Two hundred

1:47

years ago this coming Friday, if you're listening to

1:50

this episode in the week, it goes out. Crikey.

1:52

And this is a very poignant moment for you

1:54

because you love Lord Byron, don't

1:56

you? Let's be honest. Let's just put it out there.

1:59

He was my favourite. poet because we should add

2:01

that Missy Longi is in Greece and Byron

2:03

Dye is a martyr for freedom. He wrote

2:05

a lot about Greece. I was very into Greece.

2:08

I was very romantic. He spoke

2:10

for me and he is a figure

2:12

who is not just a poet but

2:14

a kind of legend really. And

2:17

so the news of his death, a martyr

2:19

for Greek freedom, only 36 years

2:21

old, it kind of sent shockwaves not just across Britain

2:23

but across the whole of Europe because I

2:25

think there's a case for saying that he is the first

2:28

great international celebrity

2:31

and by far the

2:33

most famous British person of his

2:35

day. More famous than Nelson, Tom

2:37

Shorleyard. I guess Nelson is dead by

2:39

the time that Byron has his apogee. But

2:43

yes, because I think that Nelson is

2:45

a national hero but Byron is a

2:47

focus for international adulation. I

2:50

mean I have to say that when I was coming

2:52

back to his poetry and to his life to work

2:54

out the structure for these episodes, one

2:56

thing that struck me was that in many

2:59

ways of all the people that we have

3:01

done episodes on so far, including

3:04

even John Lennon, I cannot

3:06

imagine anyone who is more

3:08

calculated to infuriate you than

3:11

Byron. He's the kind

3:13

of anti-Dominic Sandbrooke. Well, so

3:15

for people who don't like one of the

3:17

presenters of the rest of his history, this will be a dream series.

3:20

Yes, Tom. So I'll be honest. I

3:23

approach this in a spirit of Byron phobia

3:25

but I'm prepared to be converted.

3:27

I'm open-minded. That said, irrespective

3:29

of my own personal views about Byron, it

3:32

is an extraordinary story. I mean this series will

3:34

take in, as you said, the

3:36

origins of kind of celebrity culture, kind

3:39

of merchandising of a personality. There's

3:41

a lot of sex. So much

3:43

sex. There's a lot of

3:46

travel. I mean it's like a Bond

3:48

film. Every 10 minutes we're at a

3:50

different location. Albania, Greece, Constantinople.

3:54

He's going all over the Mediterranean and then back

3:56

to Britain and all kinds of jumping in and

3:58

out of people's beds and stuff. But

4:00

it's a brilliant window, isn't it, into the world

4:02

of the kind of, I guess it's the Regency.

4:05

It's what we think of as Regency Britain. Yeah,

4:07

it is the Regency. And I think also

4:10

what's fascinating about it is that he stands

4:12

on the cusp of the Regency moving into

4:14

the Victorian period. And he

4:16

is a focus for all kinds of moral

4:18

indignation. And that also is a part of

4:20

the story. It's a part

4:23

of his appeal, but it's also why

4:25

he is so feared and introduced. So

4:27

before we start the account of his

4:29

life, probably worth just for those who

4:31

don't really know very much about him,

4:34

just going through why he becomes so

4:36

famous. So above all, he is a

4:38

great poet. And he

4:40

is successful in

4:43

a way that no poet before or more particularly

4:45

since has ever been. I

4:48

mean, poets today tend not to be rock

4:50

stars. Byron was in a way the kind

4:52

of the prototype of the rock star.

4:54

So he writes this poem, Childe Harrell's pilgrimage,

4:56

which is basically a kind of a travelogue.

4:59

It's an account of his gap year, basically.

5:01

But it's so romantic. It situates him

5:03

as this kind of dark,

5:05

charismatic hero at the center of it.

5:07

And the whole of Regency London swooned

5:09

over it. And Byron's famous comment on

5:11

it is, I awoke one morning and

5:13

found myself famous. And he's

5:16

kind of like the Beatles, you know, having released

5:18

She Loves You or something. The hits just keep

5:20

coming. So he releases

5:23

this poem called The Corsair, which

5:25

again is all about a dramatic,

5:27

doomed, heroic hero out in the

5:29

Aegean. And that sells 10,000 copies

5:32

on publication day, which is a record that still

5:34

stands. I mean, no poet will ever beat that.

5:36

No, because who's going to rush out and buy

5:38

10,000 copies of any poets right these

5:40

days? And the woman

5:42

that he ends up marrying, and it's

5:45

a disastrous marriage, but she is as

5:47

obsessed by him as everyone else. And

5:49

she coins this term by Romania. Yeah.

5:52

So that is the prototype for every

5:54

kind of cultural mania

5:56

that has followed. And I

5:58

think it's worth emphasizing that. he's a genuinely

6:01

great poet. I mean his best poem,

6:03

Don Jewin, is incredibly darkly funny.

6:06

Byron is very funny as well

6:08

as very romantic. I always say

6:10

the most readable long poem in

6:12

English, but it's not

6:14

just his literary talent that makes

6:16

him famous because he is incredibly

6:18

good looking, he is the

6:21

embodiment of kind of the romantic

6:23

rake and there's just

6:25

a succession of aristocratic women who are swooning

6:28

over him. So Lady Roseberry, who

6:30

almost faints when she sees him,

6:33

Lady Mildmay said that when he spoke

6:35

to her, her heart beats so violently

6:37

that she could hardly answer him. And

6:40

the aristocratic lady who becomes the

6:43

most notoriously obsessed by him, Caroline

6:45

Lamb, she is kind

6:47

of the prototype of the

6:50

groupie really, the woman who becomes completely

6:52

obsessed by a star and is driven

6:54

to kind of madness. But the aristocratic

6:57

posh groupie, right? The posh

6:59

groupie. But I mean

7:01

it's not just posh groupie, so

7:03

feminists also feel his allure. So

7:05

Mary Shelley, the wife of Percy

7:07

Shelley, of course Mary Shelley writes

7:10

Frankenstein after spending time with Byron

7:12

in the year without a summer

7:14

of 1816. She said of

7:16

Byron, I mean she was obsessed by him as well,

7:18

there was something enchanting in his manner, his voice, his

7:20

smile, a fascination in them. So

7:23

I mean absolutely the glamour

7:26

of the rock star as well as the

7:28

great poet, I think. Pure charisma. Yeah, incredible

7:30

charisma. I mean often quite dangerous

7:32

charisma, dark charisma. I mean he's not, no

7:35

one would say he was a good man, but he's an

7:37

exciting man, right? He's an exciting man

7:39

and his charisma is not just that of a

7:41

poet of course, but also that of a freedom

7:43

fighter. So as we said,

7:46

he dies a martyr for Greece taking

7:48

part in the Grieuor of Independence that

7:50

had begun in 1821 and

7:52

was still raging when he died in 1824. And

7:56

although he doesn't really contribute,

7:59

it's... the campaign out. He dies

8:01

of fever without ever having fought a battle. His

8:04

death kind of fires

8:06

up Europe to support the

8:09

Greeks. It's kind of as though

8:11

Taylor Swift were to die a martyr for

8:13

Ukraine or something like that. It's kind of

8:16

on that level. It

8:18

transfigures the sense of what is at

8:20

stake. And Byron

8:22

to this day is probably

8:24

the most celebrated foreigner in Greece. There are

8:27

statues of him everywhere, squares that are named

8:29

after him, streets. So hugely

8:31

popular in Greece. But also, I mean,

8:33

he becomes an inspirational figure to people

8:36

throughout the 19th century, doesn't he?

8:38

Within a year of his death in

8:41

Russia, the Tsar Alexander I dies. There's

8:44

a kind of an attempted liberal

8:46

uprising before his heir, Nicholas I,

8:48

comes to power. So the Decemberists

8:50

it's called. They all get rounded

8:52

up and executed. And a

8:55

volume of Byron's poetry is in the hands of one

8:57

of the poets who is executed.

9:00

And the French painter, Déjàn de la

9:02

Croix, so he painted the famous picture

9:04

of liberty on the barricades that people

9:06

have from identify with the French Revolution.

9:09

He said, just remember passages

9:11

from Byron when you wish

9:13

to rekindle the flame. Yeah.

9:15

And so a big inspiration in the

9:17

revolutions of 1848. I mean, he's the

9:19

Che Guevara really, I mean, he's a

9:21

kind of, you know, an icon of

9:23

cool and liberty. Right. But you

9:26

mentioned that he's also quite a bad

9:28

man. So mad, bad and

9:30

dangerous to know, Lady Caroline Lamb. Yeah. It's

9:32

a famous description of him. And

9:35

Tennyson, when he is an

9:38

adult, repudiates his childhood obsession

9:40

with Byron. So this is

9:42

the guy at the beginning who when he was 14, yeah,

9:45

shouted Byron is dead or roted or whatever

9:47

and was so upset. And he says, actually,

9:50

do you know what I've thought about it?

9:52

And Byron's terrible person. Yeah. And actually, in

9:54

that story, you have the transition from regency

9:57

morality to Victorian morality, don't you? Because the

9:59

Victorians basically thought Byron was a

10:01

terrible man. I mean he is a rake, he

10:03

is a libertine, his

10:06

marriage I think beating even Ted

10:08

Hughes and Sylvia Plath into second place

10:10

is the most notorious in

10:12

literary history, the kind of

10:15

charges of sodomy and incest floating around. Yeah

10:17

you don't really want to charge of incest

10:19

hanging over you do you? Well

10:22

particularly not in the heyday of the Victorian

10:24

period but I think the reason

10:26

why in a way that just

10:28

adds to his allure is because

10:31

it kind of fuses with the the

10:33

element of self-portrayal in his poetry. So

10:35

I mentioned the corsair this poem you

10:37

know the record-breaking poem has this couplet

10:39

he left a corsair as a name

10:41

to other times linked with

10:44

one the virtue and the thousand

10:46

crime but there's a sense

10:48

in which actually the image of the ironic

10:50

hero is actually rather the other way around

10:52

that the byronic hero

10:54

is a man of incredible power

10:56

potency quality but is shadowed by

10:59

a single terrible crime and

11:01

there was a very funny feature

11:03

about this by Sam Leith you

11:05

know great writer recently marking the

11:07

anniversary in Unheard Dominic UNHDRD. Yeah.

11:10

So I'll just read what Sam said. To

11:12

be byronic is to be willful, ardent, brooding,

11:14

super humanly attractive and to have a thrilling

11:16

disregard for bourgeois convention. It is to be

11:19

an existential hero. It is admittedly

11:21

usually to have a flaw but the

11:23

flaw is of the enabling tragic flaw

11:25

sort like being too tempestuous and passionate.

11:27

The flaw in a byronic hero is

11:29

a sort of humble braggery flaw that

11:31

makes him it's always him more interesting.

11:33

You'll never catch a byronic hero having the sort of

11:36

flaws the rest of us deal with such

11:38

as being a bit sick or suffering

11:40

from athletes foot. Byronic heroes may

11:42

be cruel and self-involved but chicks

11:44

dig them. So Byron I

11:46

mean you mentioned at the beginning you said

11:48

we've done lots of episodes and other disreputable

11:50

and unpleasant characters and you mentioned John

11:53

Lennon and this is obviously the

11:55

same thing that people would say of John Lennon isn't

11:57

it? Oh yes he's flawed but he's so interesting and

11:59

difficult and dangerous and glamorous and

12:01

artistic and his flaws in

12:04

a weird way to his

12:07

admirers actually accentuate his

12:09

appeal rather than diminish it. And that's

12:11

true of Byron too, right? Yeah,

12:14

but I think that Byron foregrounds

12:16

the sense of danger and kind

12:19

of moral danger more obviously

12:23

than John Lennon. I mean John Lennon would

12:25

always say that he was on the side

12:27

of angels, just give a piece of change.

12:29

Byron is more, I mean he's self-consciously satanic.

12:31

Sympathy for the devil. Sympathy for the devil, yeah.

12:33

So I mean it's Mick Jagger

12:36

rather than John Lennon who identifies with the

12:38

romantic poets and particularly Shelly and Byron. And

12:41

Byron in particular is hugely influential I

12:43

would say on the whole course of

12:45

popular culture from his lifetime right

12:47

the way up to the present day. So very,

12:49

very obviously he's a big influence on the Bronte's,

12:52

so Rochester or Heathcliff. Heathcliff

12:54

obviously, yeah. Brooding, big coat,

12:58

standing on moors, all that kind of stuff.

13:01

Absolutely. And from them of course comes

13:03

the matinee hero right the way into

13:05

Hollywood and everything. But also a big

13:08

influence on kind of

13:10

the way that gay heroes are

13:12

presented. So Dorian Grey is hugely

13:14

influenced by Byron. And

13:16

of course the figure of the vampire

13:19

because Byron is the model for the

13:21

first aristocratic vampire. So Count Dracula would

13:23

be unthinkable without him. So just on

13:26

the vampire, wouldn't it be a

13:28

brilliant thing if somebody had written a series of novels

13:31

about vampires with Lord Byron in them? It would.

13:33

Is there such a person involved with the rest

13:35

of history? Possibly. Very

13:37

possibly. My first ever literary

13:40

offering. Just Google Tom Holland

13:43

vampire and you'll have a daughter of

13:45

cornucopia of delight. A can of worms.

13:50

But it's also I think

13:52

a reason for doing a series on

13:54

Byron. It's his anniversary. He's a very

13:56

interesting cultural figure. But also, I mean,

13:58

he does hold... as you said at the

14:01

start, a kind of a mirror up to

14:03

really fascinating periods. So it is the Napoleonic

14:05

era. Byron and

14:07

Napoleon are often compared, not

14:09

least by Byron itself. Yeah.

14:11

Amazing quotation from Macaulay,

14:13

Lord Macaulay, great historian.

14:16

Two men have died within our recollection,

14:18

who at a time of life in

14:21

which few people have completed their education

14:23

had raised themselves each in his own

14:25

department to the height of glory. One

14:27

of them died at Longwood, the

14:29

other at Misalongi. So Longwood is

14:31

where Napoleon died and St. Helena

14:34

and Misalongi is where Byron died. Yeah, and both

14:36

are exiles. And the point there is

14:38

actually both are exiles, but also both were young.

14:41

That's a really important part of

14:43

Byron's legend, isn't it? He doesn't get

14:46

old. He achieves extraordinary success at

14:48

a very young age. And there's your kind

14:50

of rock star, because rock stars tend to,

14:52

or film stars, they tend to break through

14:54

very young and often their age is part

14:56

of their charisma, isn't it? Yes.

14:59

And because he's the icon, both

15:01

of Greek nationalism and

15:03

of romanticism, both of them,

15:06

I think, over the course of the 19th century, come to

15:08

be associated with you. And again, that's something that you very

15:10

much see in the 1848 revolutions, where Byron's

15:14

ghost is stalking all

15:16

the episodes of that extraordinary year. So

15:19

I think he is a really,

15:21

really fascinating historical figure.

15:24

I mean, his story is incredible. And

15:27

he sheds light on, you know, this really,

15:29

really significant moment in European history, Napoleonic

15:32

Wars and the aftermath of the Napoleonic

15:34

Wars, the repression, which Byron is very

15:36

opposed to, but also this

15:39

this shift from the Regency

15:41

era, the Georgian era, the era of,

15:43

you know, roistering and doistering and Jack

15:45

O'Mekako and all that kind of thing.

15:48

Yeah, into the Victorian period. And

15:50

the ambivalences that he creates, I

15:52

think, are not completely gone, because I think

15:54

there's a temptation to think, oh, the Victorians,

15:57

they say stuffy. Ha ha. Yeah,

15:59

which is not right. My god they get done

16:01

with it. But actually. There. Are reasons

16:03

I think that it's way into the

16:05

present day. Why people would look

16:07

at Byron in a slightly morally condom

16:10

a three way and will.some some of

16:12

them. Yeah. so. The. Thing

16:14

about Barney's that basically everything about

16:17

him is insanely melodramatic. And this

16:19

is true of his ancestry. Okay,

16:21

because he's not just Byron. he

16:24

is Lord Byron. He is appear

16:26

of the realm. And that also

16:28

I think is an incredibly important

16:31

part of his glamour. And.

16:33

Byron, even as he affected supposed a

16:35

rebel, was also very insistent on his

16:37

rank friends, and that ranked the rise

16:40

from the fact that his ancestors had

16:42

com a fight with William the Conqueror.

16:44

And had be given lands by William

16:47

in the Midlands and they they settle

16:49

there and then like so many other

16:51

members of the century in the reformation

16:54

they take advantage of the Dissolution of

16:56

the Monasteries profits hear from him radiates

16:58

attack on the Catholic church. They do.

17:01

So. They're in the Midlands and there is

17:03

an abbey that bicycle Newstead which in

17:05

fact was not an abbey. It was

17:07

an August any and priory to be

17:09

funded by Henry the Settings. But it

17:11

gets to souls and it gets sold

17:13

by Henry the Eighth agents insisting Forty.

17:16

To. Such on the Byron. And

17:18

the Byron's settle into said Abbott's and

17:20

they leave a large section of the

17:22

abbey basically just to decay. So they

17:24

build their house in the middle of

17:26

it. but there whole sections. Yeah. and

17:28

so in time this will make it

17:30

as the thing that the romantics adore.

17:32

The sense of the they bear ruins,

17:34

quiet select kind of thing. right?

17:36

i have said some is not a

17:38

terribly romantic poets the country says they

17:40

mansfield since it's not him some mining

17:42

country yeah thats right and not a

17:44

place that you would normally identify with

17:46

romance and glamour i don't offend her

17:48

listeners who sucks and separate but as

17:51

we will see mining as he plays

17:53

quite important part in the story cool

17:55

tantalizing because it comes with the lambs

17:57

on which there are quite a lot

17:59

of coal mines So

18:01

that's the source of his wealth. So

18:03

the first Lord Byron is created

18:05

in 1643, which of course

18:07

is when the Civil War is being fought. The

18:10

guy who becomes Sir John Byron, who becomes Lord

18:12

Byron, he's fighting on the side of

18:14

the King. And

18:16

he's given his peerage as a reward for

18:19

his valour at the first battle of Newbury.

18:21

And he then commands the right wing

18:23

at Marth and Moore, not to any

18:25

great effect. Right, yes. Because of course

18:27

the royalists lose Marth and Moore. And

18:30

when the King is defeated, he goes

18:33

into exile. So prefiguring what will happen

18:35

to his descendant. And he

18:37

dies in Paris in 1652. So

18:40

it's heroism, but kind of faintly hapless

18:42

heroism. And that's a

18:44

tradition that continues because Lord

18:46

Byron's grandfather, the poet's grandfather, is

18:48

probably after Byron the most famous

18:51

of his family. He's a very

18:53

entertaining person, I think. He is.

18:55

So he's the second son of the fourth Lord Byron. And

18:58

he joins the Navy. This is where now in the

19:00

18th century. So the heyday of the rise of the

19:02

Navy to global power. Yeah. Rule

19:05

Britannia, heart of oak, people eating roast beef

19:07

on ships, all that. Yes.

19:10

So he joins as a midshipman, rises up through

19:12

the ranks, and he has a slightly unfortunate name

19:14

of foul weather Jack. Well, that's his

19:16

nickname, not his name. He

19:19

wouldn't name it somebody foul weather, as they know.

19:22

So the ship that he joins as midshipman,

19:24

it's been the subject of a very good

19:26

book recently by David Gran, who also wrote

19:29

Killers of the Flour Moon, the thing that

19:31

inspired the film. Yeah. Very

19:33

successful American non-fiction writer. Yeah. So

19:35

the guy who will come to be nicknamed foul weather

19:37

Jack joins it in 1740. And

19:40

HMS Wager is going around the world. And

19:43

in 1741, it is shipwrecked

19:45

on an island of Patagonia.

19:47

Yeah. And foul

19:50

weather Jack is one of 19 men who

19:52

get into a lifeboat. And they're

19:54

cast adrift. And he is taken

19:56

with him, his little pet dog. And

19:58

the pet dog gets eaten. by the starving men.

20:02

And Byron Anapsis is an

20:04

episode in his great poem Don Dewan.

20:07

On the sixth day they fed upon his

20:09

hide and Dewan who had still refused because

20:11

the creature was his father's dog that died.

20:14

Now feeling all the vulture in his jaws

20:16

with some remorse received they first denied as

20:18

a great favor one of the four paws

20:20

which he divided with Pedro who devoured it

20:23

longing for the other two. And Pedro is

20:25

Dewan's tutor who in due course will be

20:27

eaten by the men. And

20:29

Dominic this is also the inspiration for Patrick

20:31

O'Brien's novel The Unknown Shore. So that

20:34

was a precursor wasn't it of the Aubrey

20:36

and Mattingian master and commander series. So some

20:38

people say that the relationship in that book

20:40

anticipates Russell Crowe and

20:42

his Mattingian Paul Bettany. Anyway that's by the

20:45

by. Right but the whole Patrick

20:47

O'Brien Royal Navy all that kind of thing. I mean

20:49

this is very much the world that Plow Weatherjack is

20:51

part of and he I mean he does tremendously well

20:53

as a roic service in the Seven Years War ends

20:56

up commanding the British Navy in American

20:59

waters during the War of Independence has

21:02

nine children and dies in

21:04

1786 before his father

21:06

so he never actually becomes Lord

21:08

Byron and instead the person who

21:10

becomes the new Lord Byron the

21:12

fifth Lord Byron is his younger brother William

21:15

who also goes to sea but then gives

21:17

it up when he inherits the title and

21:20

he is known as the Wicked Lord.

21:23

And the Wicked Lord so just to get

21:25

this into context the Wicked Lord is your

21:28

Lord Byron's great uncle

21:30

is that right? That's right. Okay. Yes.

21:32

So the Wicked Lord why the Wicked

21:34

Lord? Well because he kills a neighbor

21:36

in a brawl. Okay. In a

21:38

tavern on Palmal in London. Okay. He

21:40

said to have organized orgies at New

21:42

South Abbey to have shot his coachman

21:44

dead to have murdered his wife

21:47

by throwing her into the lake. None of

21:49

which I think is actually true but it's

21:51

kind of reflective of his reputation. Oh no.

21:53

But you thought we'd throw it in there anyway just

21:55

to just to muddied his name. He runs badly out

21:57

of money chops down all the wood in the

22:00

woods around New South Abbey for timber,

22:02

flogs off everything in the

22:05

property from paintings to

22:07

toothpicks. And he leases 20,000 acres

22:10

of coal mines in Rochdale in

22:12

Lancashire for 60 pounds annual rent, which

22:14

is obviously a terrible deal. And

22:17

again, money worries will be a

22:19

shadow over the poet's life. Right.

22:21

Right. Because obviously, you know, the

22:23

fact that he is burning through

22:26

the inheritance is not good news for whoever's going

22:28

to succeed him. Now,

22:32

what a foul weather Jack's elder

22:34

son who is the father of the poet.

22:36

So he, he also has a

22:39

nickname. It's Mad Jack. Mad

22:41

Jack. We've got a Mad Jack, a wicked lord and foul

22:43

weather Jack. Yeah, we're now onto

22:45

Mad Jack. And he's basically a real life Mr.

22:48

Wickham. Okay. So in Brighton Bridgeneis,

22:50

the cad who runs off with Lydia. Yeah.

22:52

And Mad Jack, I mean, he's worse than

22:54

the cad. I'd say he's a bounder. A

22:57

rotter. A rotter. Okay. So rotter,

22:59

right. So he goes to Westminster, hopeless,

23:02

yeah, get sent to military school in Paris,

23:04

where he has a lovely time kind of

23:06

swagging around in his uniform, being heartless and

23:09

getting off with people and, you know, seducing

23:11

them and dumping them. He's

23:13

a great one for gambling debts. His

23:15

parents end up cutting him off because

23:17

he's burnt through so much money. And

23:19

so he becomes a gigolo, like a

23:22

professional gigolo. Yeah, professional gigolo. Money changes

23:24

hands. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

23:26

But all the time, he's looking around

23:28

for an heiress. Yeah. And in 1778,

23:31

he meets with a very

23:33

distant ancestor of George Osborne,

23:35

the former chancellor of the

23:38

Exchequer. Yeah. And the pod show host, who's

23:40

called Amelia Osborne, who is the wife of

23:42

the Marquis of Camarvon, and

23:44

Mad Jack and Amelia Osborne elope, and

23:47

they settle in France, and they have

23:49

three children. Two of them

23:51

die, but one of them, a girl called

23:53

Augusta, survives to

23:56

adulthood. But Amelia Osborne

23:58

dies very soon afterwards. in

24:00

1784. It is rumoured

24:02

of ill usage from her husband.

24:05

Byron, it is fair to say, always defended his

24:07

father. Comment is, it is

24:10

not by brutality that a young officer in the

24:12

guard seduces and carries off a Martianess and marries

24:14

two heiresses. It is true that he was a

24:16

very handsome man which goes a long way. That's

24:19

a terrible excuse. I mean, I think that's

24:21

a pathetic excuse. I mean, it's perfectly possible

24:23

he could have abused his wife and yet

24:25

been very handsome. I mean, those two things

24:27

are not... I know, but Byron's sticking up

24:29

for his dad. That's touching. Okay, fine. So

24:31

his dad, Mad Jack, has got

24:33

one girl called Augusta and his son's a

24:35

wife. Yeah. And Lord Byron has yet to

24:38

enter the story. So I'm going to assume

24:40

that he marries again. Yeah. So Byron, in

24:42

that comment, said that he'd married two heiresses.

24:44

So the second heiress is someone

24:47

who he meets in Bath. So the moment

24:49

that his first wife is dead, he comes

24:51

back to England, goes to Bath. Of course.

24:53

Which, as all readers of Jane Austen will

24:55

know, that is where you go. That's the

24:58

marriage market. Yeah. And there he meets with

25:00

a young Scottish heiress, Catherine Gordon, who is

25:02

heiress to the Estates of Gight, which is

25:04

near Aberdeen. And she, it is

25:06

fair to say, is considerably less glamorous than

25:08

the Martianess of Camarthen. I can see the

25:11

words staring out at me from the notes.

25:13

Frumpish waddling plain. That's

25:16

harsh. And provincial and socially

25:18

awkward. So what was it

25:20

attracted? Mad Jack to

25:22

the... Oh yes, the Estates of

25:24

Gight. The wealthy heiress. So

25:27

he marries this woman purely for her money. Purely

25:30

for her money. Yes. And the moment they've

25:32

got married and they get married in Bath, she

25:34

immediately starts selling off her inheritance to pay off

25:36

her husband's debts. Oh, this is all very

25:38

bad. And I mean, this is so familiar from

25:40

anyone who's ever read a 19th

25:43

century novel. Yeah. You know, that

25:45

go shapeless, provincial girl

25:47

who gets seduced by the CAD and

25:49

then he squanders all her money. I

25:53

feel sorry for her. And she

25:56

gets pregnant very quickly. And he

25:58

blows her money so quickly. that even

26:01

before she's given birth, her husband

26:03

is having to borrow money from

26:05

his tailor. Come on. Incredibly

26:07

humiliating. Yeah. And flee to France. And Catherine

26:09

has to move, I mean, it's shocking, she

26:12

has to move into a flat above a

26:14

shop, which she does in

26:16

Cavendish Square. In Marleybone, yeah.

26:18

And that is where on the 22nd

26:21

of January 1788, George Gordon Byron is

26:23

born, her son. So Gordon comes from

26:25

her family, obviously a Scottish name.

26:28

Yes. Quick question about Byron, does he ever

26:30

think of himself as Scottish? We'll come to

26:32

that. Okay. Oh, exciting. It's a very interesting

26:34

question. Okay. So he is born with a

26:37

club foot, and they can't

26:39

really afford the treatment for it. And

26:42

later in life, he'll be very resentful of

26:44

this. He will feel that it was his

26:46

mother's fault that this club foot wasn't cured.

26:48

Okay. And he comes to see it as a kind

26:51

of a marker of what sets him

26:53

apart. It's a kind of

26:55

a satanic stamp. The Mark of Cain kind of

26:57

thing. The Mark of Cain. But he kind of

26:59

feels, even as he is tortured by it, he

27:02

also feels that it kind of elevates him above

27:04

the common run. It's something

27:06

that marks him as different. And the reason

27:08

that there is no possibility of kind of

27:10

getting proper medical treatment for it the moment

27:13

he's born is because obviously daddy isn't there

27:15

because daddy is off dodging the bailiffs. I

27:17

think it's pretty harsh to blame his mother

27:19

and not his father for it, frankly. It

27:21

is very harsh. I guess it's

27:24

because basically daddy is barely there. So Byron

27:26

doesn't know him. Yeah. Where he has lots

27:28

of scope to blame his mother because his

27:30

mother is always there. Anyway, they move from

27:32

London to Aberdeen because that's in Scotland. And

27:34

so therefore under Scottish law, Jack

27:36

can't be arrested for debts accrued in

27:38

England. And it's obviously a

27:41

complete nightmare. Jack Byron comes and joins his wife

27:43

there. But again, they have so little money that

27:45

they have to, again, live in a flat above

27:47

a shop. And just

27:49

to add to the fun, they have

27:51

a sternly Calvinist nursemaid called Agnes Gray,

27:54

who just makes it terrible. They're

27:57

endlessly rowling. Byron's mother is kind of

27:59

always losing her temper with him, calling

28:01

him a damned lame brat, and then

28:03

smothering him in kisses. Jack

28:06

is leeching her out of every last penny.

28:08

He then vanishes to France where,

28:10

Dominic, he embarks on an affair

28:12

with his sister. Okay, stop right

28:14

there, Tom. More incest will

28:17

feature in this podcast. What is it about

28:19

the Byron's and incest? Why is he sleeping

28:21

with his sister? I don't know. I

28:23

mean, she has lots of money. He knows

28:25

her. Yeah, I mean, that's not a reason. Well,

28:28

it is because he has so little money, whoever

28:30

he can get the money off. That's fine. But

28:32

I mean, it seems weird for his sister to

28:34

say, listen, it's a condition of me bailing you

28:36

out. That's not

28:38

normal. I agree. It's very

28:40

much not the kind of behavior that you

28:43

get in tipping Norton. I entirely accept that.

28:45

But it's the kind of thing that if

28:47

you're a mad rake, that's what you do.

28:49

But anyway, the sister goes off to Bath,

28:51

leaves Jack there, and he's

28:53

so scared. He starts coughing up blood,

28:55

probably dies of TB. Byron thinks that

28:58

he'd slit his throat, but probably not. And

29:00

he is dead by 1791. I mean, he's

29:02

in France at the heyday of the of

29:04

the terror and everything. Yeah. But he obviously

29:06

has other things on his mind. Yeah. And

29:08

the consequence of all this is with

29:10

his clubfoot, his father going

29:13

off, sleeping with his

29:15

sister, coughing up blood, possibly killing himself.

29:17

Yeah. Byron feels that

29:20

he has a cursed inheritance. Well, I think it's

29:22

fair to say he hasn't had the ideal start

29:24

in life. And

29:28

things actually get worse, excitingly. So we'll

29:30

return after the break to see how

29:32

things could possibly get worse for him.

29:43

Welcome back to the rest of history. We are talking

29:45

about the life of George Gordon Byron, Lord

29:47

Byron, great rake, great poet, great character

29:49

and international celebrity of the early 19th

29:52

century. Tom, his childhood so far has

29:54

had something of the Victorian novel about

29:56

it and actually becomes even more Victorian

29:58

novel after his father's death, doesn't

30:01

it? Yeah, because they're stranded in Aberdeen. You

30:03

know, this little boy growing up

30:06

there with his mother, who's been

30:08

fleeced by his father and this

30:10

stern Calvinist nursemaid Agnes Gray. And

30:14

it's awful, basically, you know, they're

30:16

very poor. He has very kind of rudimentary

30:18

schooling. It all looks awful, but

30:20

then. Great expectations.

30:23

Okay. Because what happens is that

30:25

the wicked law's heir is only

30:27

surviving grandson. So that's Byron's cousin.

30:30

I'm guessing second cousin or something with it. I

30:32

don't know. It's all very confusing. Okay. But basically

30:34

as it stands, Byron is not going to succeed

30:36

because the wicked Lord has a grandson. But then

30:38

this grandson gets killed at the siege of Calvi

30:40

in 1794, which is the same

30:44

one that Nelson loses his eye at, I think,

30:46

isn't it? Yeah. Hit by Spencers and his eye

30:48

is shrapnel. Yeah. So this is on Corsica, the

30:50

British trying to capture Corsica. They're trying to get

30:52

a Mediterranean base in 1794. They're

30:54

fighting the French revolutionary forces. They

30:57

actually do capture Calvi, but this

30:59

guy is killed. Yeah. And Byron is now

31:01

in prime position to inherit what is left

31:03

of the estate. He is the heir. Right.

31:05

And so immediately, you know,

31:08

his prospects have massively brightened. He's moved

31:10

to the grammar school, gets

31:12

much better education. And because

31:15

he now knows that he's going to become

31:17

a Lord, I think he starts kind of

31:19

chafing against what he sees as the provincialism

31:21

of Aberdeen. Right. And he escapes it in

31:23

two ways. One by, you know, he comes

31:25

to love the grandeur of the mountains around

31:27

him. He sees rugged

31:30

terrain as an escape from, you

31:33

know, the shop and the nursery made and all that

31:35

kind of thing. Which is very 1790s, isn't it? Unbelievably

31:39

1790s. I mean,

31:41

the love of nature and the great

31:43

vistas and brooding thoughts out on the

31:45

craggy hills and all that stuff. All

31:47

that kind of thing. Yeah. But also

31:49

very 1790s is losing yourself in books

31:51

because this is exactly what Napoleon did.

31:53

So like Napoleon Byron is obsessed by

31:55

Roman history, but also by

31:57

Oriental history. So he loves travel accounts.

32:00

of people going to the Ottoman Empire, say, or

32:02

to Greece or wherever. Yeah. And he loves the

32:04

Arabian Nights. And this is a fascination that will

32:06

be with him forever. A taste for the exotic,

32:08

I guess is fair to say. Yeah. And then

32:11

comes the moment they've all been waiting for, 19th

32:13

of May 1798, the

32:15

death of the wicked lord. And

32:18

he leaves so little money that actually it's a

32:20

bit of an effort for Byron's mother, Catherine, to

32:22

scrape the money together. But they get it, get

32:26

into a stage coach, head down

32:28

to Nottinghamshire, move to Newstead Abbey.

32:31

And it's basically a ruin. The wicked lord

32:33

has not been, he's not been a dab

32:35

hand at the DIY, I think it's fair

32:37

to say. Right. But you know, to the

32:39

newly elevated Lord Byron,

32:42

it's absolutely thrilling. You know, he's 10

32:44

years old, he's inherited this

32:46

kind of broken down ruin. I

32:49

mean, unbelievably exciting. Right. He's

32:51

got a bit of a couplet here. I mean, you

32:53

know, nice poem. Through thy

32:55

battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle,

32:58

thou the hall of my father's art

33:00

gone to decay. This

33:02

is the kind of poetry he writes to begin

33:04

with. It's very kind of melodramatic. But you could

33:06

see why. Yeah. So slightly gothic. It's a gothic

33:09

scene. Completely gothic. I mean, this is the age

33:11

of the gothic, isn't it? And yeah, absolutely.

33:13

Sort of bare ruin choirs,

33:16

memories of the past, the wind howling, all

33:18

that business. Yes. But

33:21

his affairs are in an absolute mess. And

33:24

he has this lawyer, John Hanson, who

33:26

in time will show himself to be

33:28

rather sinister. But he kind of, you

33:30

know, he's trying to get it all in order, try and

33:32

raise some money, which he does pretty

33:35

effectively. And Byron's mother stays

33:37

at Newstead, but Byron himself is taken out because

33:39

it felt that this isn't a good place for

33:41

a boy to be growing up. There's only

33:43

10, right? I mean, it'd be mad for

33:45

him to be there. So he is sent

33:47

to Nottingham to live with Agnes Gray, the

33:50

Bible-thumping nursemaid. Yeah. Who nevertheless

33:52

turns out to be very badly

33:54

behaved. So despite her

33:56

stern Calvinism, she's actually spending

33:58

all her time getting drunk and having

34:01

flings with coachmen. And then

34:03

she starts sexually abusing the young Byron. Okay.

34:06

What on earth is going on there?

34:08

He's 10. Well, you say she's sexually

34:10

abusing him. I mean, she starts estimating

34:13

him, manipulating him. Yeah. Messing

34:16

around with him. Yeah. And he's, he doesn't

34:18

want this to happen. It's against his will.

34:20

Well, I mean, it has a seismic influence

34:22

on him. Yeah. I mean, so firstly, he

34:24

comes to associate Christianity

34:26

with hypocrisy and Kant. Not unreasonably

34:28

in her case. Absolutely. Because, you

34:30

know, she's speaking the Bible while

34:32

she's fiddling around with him. Yes.

34:35

But I think it also leaves

34:37

him with kind of tortured,

34:39

ambivalent attitudes to women. Yeah, of course.

34:41

Seeing that they can't really be trusted.

34:43

Yeah. And he reflects about the impact

34:46

of it on him shortly

34:48

before he dies. So, you know, years later, and

34:50

he says, my passions were developed very early, so

34:52

early that few would believe me if I were

34:54

to state the period and the facts which accompanied

34:57

it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons which

34:59

caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts, having anticipated

35:01

life. He's probably what, 11, 12 when this is

35:04

happening? Yeah. And he's very much not

35:06

by Ronic at this point. He's kind of fat.

35:09

He's full. He's

35:11

shy. And his

35:13

neighbors, so they're in provincial England, they

35:16

see him as provincial. Yeah. So he's in a bad

35:18

way, really. So Tom, I have to say, having distal

35:20

Byron earlier on, I feel sorry for him next. This

35:22

is a terrible thing to have happened to him. But

35:25

also, Dominic, the other thing that you'd like

35:27

about what happens next is that Hanson's solution

35:29

is to send him to a private school.

35:31

I applaud that. You applaud that. Yeah. So

35:33

Byron gets sent to Harrow in

35:35

April 18, a one. So he's going up in the

35:37

world. Yeah. And obviously he hates it at first because

35:40

he has a club foot. I was about to say,

35:42

if you've got a club foot, going to Regency era

35:44

boarding school is probably not ideal. It's not. Yeah,

35:47

it's not ideal. And so he gets horribly

35:49

bullied, but he stands up for himself. And

35:52

rather like Tom Brown, Dominic, he stands up

35:54

for all the other boys as well. So

35:56

he's full of pluck. Oh, brilliant.

35:58

But he probably doesn't do the praying and

36:00

stuff that Tom Brown does. No, he

36:02

doesn't do that. He doesn't do that.

36:04

And then age 15, very un-Tom Brown,

36:06

he develops a massive pash. A pash?

36:09

A pash. Tom, you're the first person in about

36:11

40 years to use the word pash. I

36:14

know. It just seems the

36:16

appropriate word for an

36:18

11-year-old boy, Lord Clare, and the memory of

36:20

this stays with Byron for the rest of

36:22

his life. And in fact, in 1821, while

36:24

they're in Italy,

36:27

their coaches pass each other. And

36:29

Byron is absolutely un-fuddled by it. They kind of

36:31

meet and talk for five minutes, and he rushes

36:33

back and writes in his journal, I never hear

36:35

the word Clare without a beating of the heart,

36:38

even now. So does anything

36:40

happen between him and this Lord

36:42

Clare? It's just kind of he has a crush

36:44

on him, basically. Yeah, I don't

36:46

think so. But I mean, I think there

36:49

are all kinds of schoolboyish crushes going on.

36:51

And Byron will remember Harrow as

36:53

a home, a world, a paradise to

36:55

me, in the way that lots of

36:57

romantic private school boys do.

37:01

They remember it as a kind of Eden from

37:03

which they get exiled. And I

37:05

think that a further reason why Byron remembers it

37:07

as a paradise is that once he has left

37:09

Harrow and gone out into the wide world, he

37:12

keeps his tastes for boys.

37:14

But of course, this is now much more dangerous. And

37:17

it's something that in the kind of

37:20

the traditional biographies of Byron was always

37:22

suppressed. It was part of what his

37:24

friends wanted to kind of edit out

37:26

of the story. But I

37:29

think it's pretty fundamental. And all kinds

37:31

of texts over the course of the

37:33

past 200 years have been found that

37:35

demonstrate pretty conclusively that

37:37

Byron's tastes were definitely homosexual.

37:41

And there was a groundbreaking book that came

37:43

out in the 70s, Byron and Greek Love,

37:45

which I mean, it emphasizes this, but it

37:48

also emphasizes how dangerous it was. Because

37:51

the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars

37:53

has led the British

37:55

very strongly to identify

37:57

homosexuality with racism. Napoleon,

38:00

all kinds of filthy rot

38:03

like that. And

38:05

so basically if you're

38:08

caught having a gay affair,

38:11

no matter how upper class you are, you

38:13

risk being put in the pillory, kind of

38:15

beaten up or hanged. And

38:18

this is a kind of shadow that hangs

38:20

over Byron from the moment he leaves school.

38:22

So he has this shadow hanging over him,

38:25

but it's not all bad because of course

38:27

Cambridge awaits. And the Byron's go to Trinity

38:29

College, so Byron goes off to Trinity College.

38:31

And basically he loves that as well. I

38:34

mean, he's loved Harrow, he loves Cambridge. He

38:36

gets to wear a fancy robe covered in

38:38

gold because he's a peer. So he loves

38:40

that. They have different gowns if they're peers.

38:43

Yeah, really. You get a special one. I don't

38:45

know whether that's still the case. Maybe if we have any Cambridge

38:47

undergraduate members of the peerage. Love

38:50

to know that. And he cuts a tremendous

38:52

dash. He turns up for Freshers Week and writes

38:55

to Hanson, Dear Sir, I will be obliged

38:57

to you to order me down four dozen

38:59

of wine, Port, Sherry, Claret and Madeira, one

39:01

dozen of each. So Hanson is the guy

39:04

running his estate? Yes, the lawyer. So he's

39:06

still dependent on Hanson? Well, Hanson is his

39:08

lawyer. Okay. So he's the

39:10

guy who's responsible for fixing things. Right. Byron

39:13

by now, he's a peer, he's getting a

39:15

taste for hard living. He's not going to

39:17

obey college rules. He's told that he can't

39:19

have a dog. So he famously brings in

39:22

a bear, installs a bear in

39:24

the college. And he, in

39:26

the kind of the very heady, romantic

39:28

way of young men in this period

39:30

and right the way through the next

39:32

two centuries, who go to Oxford or

39:34

Cambridge, he develops very, very close friendships.

39:36

And these are friends who will be

39:39

a part of his life for a long time.

39:41

The most important of these friends is a man

39:43

called John Cam Hobhouse, who is

39:45

actually very serious, very sober, from

39:47

a radical dissenting background. So not the

39:50

kind of person who would obviously hang

39:52

out with a hard living peer and

39:54

to begin with, they heat each other,

39:56

but they end up and Hobhouse will

39:58

be Byron's closest friend. throughout his life.

40:00

I guess because they're both outsiders, they're

40:03

both conscious of being outsiders. Yes, I

40:05

think so. I think so,

40:07

yes. But I think also they come to share so

40:09

many experiences. And the other

40:11

one is a man called Charles Skinner Matthews,

40:13

who has two very telling nicknames. One of

40:16

them is Citizen, which is

40:18

kind of the regency equivalent of Comrade.

40:20

Yes, of course. Matthews is an atheist,

40:22

he's a Republican. You know, this is

40:24

a time where expressing atheist

40:27

or Republican views can really get you

40:29

in trouble. But so also,

40:31

as we've said, sodomy can get you

40:33

in trouble as well. And

40:35

Matthews' other nickname is The Methodist. And

40:38

The Methodist is kind of code

40:40

in Byron's circle for

40:43

being gay. So so, okay. So

40:46

they're skating on the edge there.

40:48

And his homosexuality, so Charles Skinner

40:50

Matthews, that would be well known to

40:53

his friends. It wouldn't be hidden

40:55

from them. Yeah, be well known to his

40:57

friends, kind of, you know, a bit like

40:59

Sebastian Flight in Brideshead Revisited. Yeah, it's that

41:01

kind of if you know the code, if

41:03

you're part of the group, if you know

41:05

the code. Yeah, exactly. It's a bit of

41:08

a methodism, that kind of absolutely. And it's

41:10

pretty clear, I think that mentioned Sebastian Flight

41:12

Byron in his second year comes

41:15

back and he is transformed into an

41:17

unbelievably handsome figure. So before that, he'd

41:19

been a bit overweight. And

41:21

he becomes obsessed by losing it. So he sets up

41:23

in a gym with gentleman John Jackson,

41:26

who had been champion of all England from

41:28

1798 to 1803. And

41:31

he also goes on an absolute starvation diet.

41:33

And I think he basically becomes bulimic. Oh,

41:35

really? Yeah. He's very, very obsessed

41:38

by diet. He has all kinds of weird phobias about it,

41:40

for instance, you can't bear to watch a woman eat. Kind

41:43

of very weird. But over the course of his time

41:45

at Cambridge, he loses almost four stone. And

41:48

I think at this point, his gay

41:50

identity is incredibly important to him. Yeah.

41:53

And so he has this great love affair

41:55

and it's with a choir boy called John

41:57

Edelstyn, who is two years younger.

42:00

younger than Byron at this point, so 16. So

42:02

Byron is 18 and this guy is 16. Yeah.

42:05

OK. And it's said

42:07

that Byron rescued him from drowning in

42:09

the cam. Yeah. Whether that's true or

42:11

not, we don't know. But Byron is

42:13

completely devoted to him. He claims

42:15

later in life that it was a violent,

42:17

though, pure love and passion. We don't know

42:19

whether it was. But what is

42:21

certainly the case is that when Edelstin's voice breaks,

42:24

Byron's passion slightly fades. And

42:27

he goes and finds him a job as

42:29

a city, as an apprentice clerk.

42:31

OK. So that is a thing for

42:33

boys, not for men. Is that right?

42:36

Yeah. Absolutely. OK. I'm

42:39

not going to say anything. I mean, listeners can draw their own conclusions.

42:42

No. So that is an aspect that

42:45

would raise eyebrows in the 21st century. Yeah,

42:48

absolutely. And you can see why Byron is nervous

42:51

about it. Yeah. And I think

42:53

that because of that, when he leaves

42:55

Cambridge, he kind of

42:57

becomes aggressively heterosexual. So he

42:59

writes to Matthew saying, I've plunged into

43:01

an abyss of sensuality. And

43:04

he's talking about women, not boys

43:06

at that point. Yeah. But it's absolutely typical

43:08

that he has a particular fair with a

43:11

young prostitute called Caroline. He installs

43:13

her in his rooms in London. But

43:15

when she goes with him to Brighton, which

43:18

of course is the most fashionable place in

43:20

England at the time, made famous by the

43:22

Prince Regent, he dresses her up as a

43:24

boy and passes her off as his brother

43:26

Gordon. OK, that's pretty peculiar, babe. So

43:30

again, there's the kind of hint of incest there.

43:32

Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. At this point,

43:35

he is somebody who, if you were

43:37

describing that personality and upbringing today, I mean, I

43:39

know it's a silly thing to do, but if

43:41

you did, you would

43:43

say of him, he's somebody who's completely messed up. He's

43:46

had the most terrible upbringing that has really

43:48

messed him up. And he is now,

43:50

to some degree, reproducing the patterns

43:52

of behavior. Yeah, the patterns of behavior, the abuse

43:55

that he has suffered. I mean,

43:57

that guy, Edelstyn, by the way, was an orphan,

43:59

wasn't he? So, I mean,

44:01

there's no way I think of dressing that up

44:03

and it looking anything other than very, very dodgy.

44:05

Well, I suppose you could say in Byron's defense,

44:08

he's very generous. I mean, Eddleston's an orphan,

44:10

he doesn't have anything to look after him. You know,

44:12

gives him lots of money, sets him up

44:14

with a job. We had this conversation about

44:16

Oscar Wilde, didn't we? Yeah. Where

44:19

do you stand when you look at those kinds of

44:21

relationships? Do you say this is exploitative and there was

44:23

a massive power dynamic? Or do you say, actually,

44:26

you know, there's generosity here, there

44:28

is genuine affection and the other person is

44:30

gaining lots from it. I mean, it's hard

44:33

to know where to stand. Yeah.

44:35

And I think that as with Wilde, say with Byron,

44:38

the aspects of his life that

44:40

appalls the Victorians are not necessarily

44:42

what appall us, but there are

44:44

aspects that are morally troubling

44:46

to both Victorians and to people in the 21st

44:48

century. Yeah. And

44:50

which, you know, continues to give him this kind of selfless

44:53

quality. So you say he's messed

44:55

up. I mean, he's also

44:57

massively in debt. So

44:59

he's been renting out Newstead all this time

45:01

to try and raise cash. And he's been

45:03

renting it to a guy who seems to

45:05

have come on to Byron. They have a

45:07

massive falling out. Yeah. He kicks

45:09

this guy out, goes back to Newstead and

45:11

kind of has a brilliantly gothic time. He

45:13

invites all his friends. They drink Madeira out

45:16

of cups that are made of the monk's

45:18

skulls. They practice their

45:20

shooting in the main hall of Newstead.

45:22

But, you know, he's running so badly out of money that he thinks that I'm

45:25

going to have to sell it. And the other

45:27

thing that's worrying him, which of course is something that worries

45:29

everybody when they leave universities, what are you going to do

45:31

with your life? You know, he's been a

45:33

big name on campus. Great things

45:35

are expected of him. But what?

45:37

So the obvious thing would be politics.

45:40

He's a peer, so he can sit in the House of Lords

45:42

and he takes his seat. Right. So he's

45:44

automatically a politician if he wants to be. Yeah. Yeah.

45:47

So he takes his seat in March 1809. And I

45:49

guess by instinct, he would incline to

45:52

the Whigs. So Britain at this time

45:54

is governed by the Tories. They're

45:56

fighting a war. Yeah. It's

45:58

a pretty repressive form of politics. government, lots

46:01

of civil liberties have been suspended. Byron

46:04

strongly identifies with the more radical wing

46:06

of the Whigs, the kind of Whigs

46:08

who actually pretty much support

46:10

Napoleon. They loved the French Revolution and they loved

46:12

Napoleon. This is kind of Charles James Fox, you

46:15

know, let's all worship at the altar of France, that kind

46:17

of thing. Yeah, but Byron, although

46:20

he kind of sides with them, he

46:22

doesn't want to identify with them basically

46:24

because he's too egocentric,

46:26

too lordly, too independent. He doesn't

46:28

want to have his individuality subsumed

46:30

within a party system. You can't

46:32

imagine him being a party man,

46:34

can you? No, he's absolutely

46:36

not. And so he delays giving his

46:38

maiden speech. The other career

46:41

perhaps is as a poet.

46:43

So he's been writing poetry throughout his

46:46

time at Cambridge and he publishes a collection

46:48

of these poems in 1807 when

46:50

he's 19, calls it out of idleness.

46:53

And he publishes this at the head of

46:55

it, he kind of writes this introduction where

46:57

he basically says, you know, I've just plead

46:59

my minority, I'm just a young man, have

47:01

these trifles and everyone is very polite about

47:03

them because, you know, he's a peer and

47:05

he's very young. But the Edinburgh

47:07

Review, which is a Whig publication and so Byron

47:09

would have expected it to be supportive, I mean,

47:12

just tears into him, gives him

47:14

one of the all time terrible reviews

47:16

in the history of English literature. Well,

47:18

Byron is in good company there because

47:20

there are other people in history who have had

47:23

disabliding reviews from Scottish newspapers.

47:25

Yes. And you

47:27

will recall that there was

47:29

a brilliant production of the play Beckett in

47:32

Scotland in the 1990s that

47:34

received a one star review from the Scotsman. And

47:37

I was playing the lead, would you believe?

47:39

Right. And the impact of

47:41

that devastating review on you? Yeah. Well,

47:44

actually, that Byron comparison, which

47:46

has often been made between the two

47:48

of us. So Byron's response was to

47:50

drink three bottles of claret. Yeah. And

47:53

to dash off of a tupative satire on the

47:55

literary scene, which he called English bards and Scottish

47:57

reviewers. And so he's not just

47:59

attacking. the people at the Edinburgh Review, he's

48:02

also basically attacking every famous poet in Britain,

48:04

which Fiona McCarthy and her great biography

48:07

of Byron, Byron Life and Legend, describes

48:09

as an almost manic act of courage,

48:12

because he's basically taking on the entire literary

48:14

establishment. So basically, you know, his initial career

48:16

isn't going well. And adding to the problem

48:18

is that he kind of despises poets, you

48:20

know, they're not people getting out there and

48:22

doing things, they're not shaping the fate of

48:24

nations, they're not Napoleon, you know, they just

48:26

scribble away. Because he's like so many people,

48:28

Tom, does he live in the shadow of

48:31

Napoleon? Because lots of people do in this

48:33

period, they think Napoleon is a self made

48:35

man, he's the kind of person who didn't

48:37

exist before, he's the ultimate romantic hero. And

48:39

I mean, you see this so much in

48:41

I don't know, The Red and the Black

48:43

by Stendhal, great French novelist, and Stendhal meets

48:45

Byron. Oh, really? Yeah, I can imagine they

48:48

would get on very well. Yeah. So this

48:50

sort of sense, which I don't think people

48:52

have massively had before, yeah, a sense of

48:54

inadequacy, because they're not Napoleon. Does Byron have

48:56

this? Well, I mean, in Britain

48:58

by now, Napoleon is well, literally the bogey. Yes.

49:01

But he's Byron is unusual in the degree of

49:03

hero worship that he chose. So as a boy

49:05

at Harrow, he had had a bust of Napoleon,

49:08

and had defended it against people who'd been trying to

49:10

smash it. And he always kind

49:12

of has a soft spot for Byron clearly

49:15

kind of does identify with him. And I

49:17

think that this is all part of the

49:19

churn that means that, you know, by 1809, he's

49:22

19. He doesn't really know

49:24

what to do with himself. He's harried

49:26

by debts. He's worried that he's going

49:28

to get arrested and either hanged or

49:30

put in the pillory for his sexuality.

49:32

You know, he doesn't really want to

49:35

go into politics, doesn't really want to kind of hang

49:37

around and be a scribbler. And so

49:39

he decides to go abroad, you know,

49:41

escape his career anxieties, his money worries,

49:43

escape his sense of the oppressive character

49:45

of English morality. And the

49:47

moment he decides to do this, he immediately becomes more

49:50

cheerful. And he decides that he will

49:52

go to the place that

49:54

has always haunted his imaginings, which

49:57

is the Orient. And so on the

49:59

2nd of July, 1809

50:01

Byron heads down to the southwest to

50:03

Falmouth. He takes ship to

50:06

Portugal and this will be

50:08

the first step on

50:10

his eastern adventure. Well brilliant what a cliffhanger

50:12

Tom and if people want to join Lord

50:14

Byron on that adventure right away just to

50:17

give you a taste of what is coming

50:19

he's going to Portugal in the middle

50:21

of the Peninsular War. Sir Arthur Wellesley the

50:23

future Duke of Wellington fighting against Napoleon's forces

50:26

he's going to Malta to

50:28

Albania to Greece to Constantinople.

50:31

He'll meet the Sultan won't you Tom

50:33

is that right he meets the Sultan

50:35

so lots of drama lots of colour

50:37

to come you can of course listen

50:40

to that right now all you

50:42

have to do is join the Rest

50:44

is History Club with all the glittering

50:46

benefits and baubles that that brings you.

50:49

Yeah that's a kind of an exotic

50:51

fantasy in its own right isn't

50:53

it the Rest is History Club and you

50:55

can join that by going to therestishistory.com

50:59

if not if you're a pettifogging

51:02

pooterish Victorian kind of person you just

51:04

want to wait for the next episode

51:06

with all the ads fair

51:08

enough be my guest you'll just have to

51:10

wait till next time but what delights and

51:12

treats are in store for us eh Tom

51:15

absolutely we'll see you next time bye bye

51:17

bye Sherlock

51:27

where are you going grab your microphone

51:29

now where are you are

51:32

going to Dartmoor Hello

51:35

case what's your emergency I found

51:37

a found a body on

51:40

Dartmoor early reports

51:42

from Dartmoor coming to us now

51:44

regarding a potential murder it's very

51:46

sad news now regarding the horse

51:48

trainer June Straker this was

51:51

the home of June Straker was

51:53

an exceptional trainer where

51:58

is Silverblade Silver

52:00

Blaze, are you suffering? I'm not

52:03

suffering, I'm a winner in Silver

52:05

Blaze. I

52:07

want to help out a multi-million pound race horse

52:09

can go missing. I am too stable. I'm

52:12

so confused. I'm in national slavery. I'm

52:15

in slavery. We believe we're in national

52:17

permission and a train against two. I'm

52:19

in the massive tunnel, racing stables urging

52:21

calm, urging respect. But

52:23

you're saying that the disappearance of Silver Blaze

52:26

is political? No, no, no, Robert, I'm absolutely

52:28

not safe. Racing horse is

52:30

full stop, it's inhumane. A little

52:32

explainability. The first part in social work

52:34

is the first of all days, and the

52:36

other is a successful decision. Silver

52:39

Blaze is an example of

52:42

animal rights to the

52:44

absolute experiment. How is that

52:46

not? That is nothing like an animal

52:48

that is missing. And a woman is dead.

52:50

Right, gambling money at the arm of it, and it's the

52:52

companies that have the blood on their ass. We've got

52:54

a man in the back. We've got

52:56

a man in the back. This

52:58

is Silver Blaze. It's

53:09

a sick, twisted industry. Sick, twisted industry. You go

53:11

and look in a racing yard and see

53:13

how horses are looked after. And the wine

53:15

factory is in England after. Oh, thank

53:18

you. Bye, boys. Bye, comfortable

53:20

member of the garden. Thank

53:22

you, Mr. Speaker. Our

53:24

hearts are broken. The stranger was found

53:27

dead on the moor. Our community is

53:29

wounded. I'm going to fix the Silver

53:31

Blaze! But the people

53:33

of Dartmoor will not give up our search

53:36

for Silver Blaze. All

53:40

safety stakeholders believe that sport is at a critical junction.

53:42

We're going to find first. For our

53:44

men, this is back bone. While Silver Blaze. Silver

53:47

Blaze! Silver Blaze! Silver

53:49

Blaze! Silver

53:51

Blaze! Sherlock,

53:54

are you trying to draw my attention to something? Yes.

53:58

To the curious incident. of

54:00

the dog in the night time. Sherlock

54:04

and co. The adventure of

54:06

silver blaze begins 9th of

54:08

April. Search Sherlock and co

54:11

wherever you get your podcasts.