(1788 - 1824)
George Gordon Byron was the son of Captain John Byron. His upbringing was modest until, aged ten, the family title and estate passed to him. He studied at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, before making a Grand Tour, during which he visited Albania. On his return, he published the first two cantos of ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’. After an affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb, he courted her cousin, Annabella Milbanke, whom he married in 1815. They had a daughter, Ada, before separating in 1816. That year he travelled to Switzerland and then to Venice. In 1823, while living near Genoa with a married Countess, he decided to become a figure-head in the Greek War of Independence. Byron never saw action but died of a fever in 1824.
