Byron

Fiona MacCarthy makes a breakthrough in interpreting Byron''s life and poetry drawing on John Murray''s world-famous archive.

She brings a fresh eye to his early years: his childhood in Scotland, embattled relations with his mother, the effect of his deformed foot on his development. She traces his early travels in the Mediterranean and the East, throwing light on his relationships with adolescent boys - a hidden subject in earlier biographies.

While paying due attention to the compelling tragicomedy of Byron''s marriage, his incestuous love for his half-sister Augusta and the clamorous attention of his female fans, she gives a new importance to his close male friendships, in particular that with his publisher John Murray. She tells the full story of their famous disagreement, ending as a rift between them as Byron''s poetry became more recklessly controversial.

Byron was a celebrity in his own lifetime, becoming a ''superstar'' in 1812, after the publication of