Legacy: The Artists Behind The Legends

George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, was an early 19th century poet, nobleman, politician, and leading figure in the Romantic Movement who was a celebrity both famous and infamous during his life. While he is seen as one of the greatest British poets of all time, to be fair here, I am not exactly sure where to even begin with Lord Byron this week, this being a man who thought himself “such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe [him].” There is of course his more well-known sexual exploits – he was definitely indiscriminate in who he wanted to sleep with, and that included his half-sister and some serious STD’s in his early twenties. In one year alone, Byron banged over two hundred and fifty people in Venice, and to mark each conquest, he would take a clipping of his lovers pubic hair and save it in an envelope with their name on it. He was best friends with Percy Shelley (husband of Mary Shelley, who we covered previously), he kept a multitude of animals on his estate