Hidden Consequences 
John Mullan
- Byron: Life and Legend by Fiona MacCarthy
The trailer for the recent BBC dramatisation of Byron’s life made no bones about the poet’s appeal. ‘Everything you’ve ever heard about him is true,’ the husky female voice-over promised. Here was a story that would excite us because of what we already thought we knew. Judging by the immediate critical response to Fiona MacCarthy’s biography, the appetite for Byron’s life is indeed sharpened by all the stories we already have. In the Guardian the historian Kathryn Hughes thought that ‘Byron was indeed someone special,’ but ‘not, perhaps, because of his poetry, which is hardly read now.’ Coinciding with this biography, an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: The Cult of Lord Byron, confirmed the allure of the poet’s ‘life and legend’. Everyone seems to agree that the making of a celebrity (somewhere he must have been called a ‘cultural icon’) is fascinating enough in itself. Never has a dead poet lived on so successfully without his poetry.
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From the LRB letters page: [ 4 December 2003 ] Tony Simpson.
John Mullan, who edited Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe for Everyman, is a professor of English at University College London. How Novels Work will appear in October.
Other articles by this contributor:
High-Meriting, Low-Descended · The Unpolished Pamela
Taking Sides · on the high road with Bonnie Prince Charlie
Zone of Anecdotes · Betrothed to Christ and in a muddle
Unpranked Lyre · The Laziness of Thomas Gray
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