Lord Byron

Lord Byron in Albanian dress painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813. This painting can be viewed at the Venizelos Mansion, the British Ambassador's residence in Athens.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824) is consered one of England's greatest poets. He was known not only for his poetry, but for his private life, including love affairs with both sexes. He died of a fever while fighting for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.

The son of army office "Mad Jack" Byron, he inherited the title of Baron Byron of Rochdale from his great-uncle "the Wicked Lord" Byron at the age of 10. Despite being born with a deformed foot, he was very athletic, and swam the Hellespont from Europe to Asia in 1810. This is sometimes taken to be the birth of the sport of open water swimming.

In 1809–10 he went on the"grand Tour" in Portugal, Spain and Greece. His travels formed the basis of one of his most famous poens, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. While in Athens, he met the young Nicolò Giraud, and they are thought to have had a sexual relationship.

On returning to England, he had an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, whose husband later became Lord Melbourne the Prime Minister. In 1815 Byron married Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke. They had a daughter, August Ada (who later became Countess of Lovelace and is regarded as the world's first computer programmer) but the marriage was unhappy. Just a year after the wedding, Byron signed a deed of separation, and left England, never to return, among scandalous rumours of adultery, sodomy, and even incest with his half-sister.

In 1816 he stayed for a while in a villa near Lake Geneva, with the poet Shelley, Mary Godwin (later Shelley's wife) and his physician Polidori. At Byron's suggestion they each wrote a ghost story. Mary Godwin's story was the first version of her famous novel [Frankenstein.