Byron: The Last Journey

In 1812, the shy, handsome aristocrat Lord Byron awoke to instant fame with the publication of Childe Harold, his first epic poem. Only twelve years later, after a life of debauchery, intense creativity, exile, marriage, and fatherhood, he died in his 36th year in Missologhi, Greece, where he had gone to aid the country's struggle for freedom from the Turks. Ever since, he has been the ideal of the romantic poet--lonely, exiled, enshrouded in mystery. Harold Nicolson's engaging biographical narrative, written in 1924, brilliantly illuminates the poet's final years. Sir Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) was a distinguished biographer and diarist; he was also a diplomat and the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West.