Lord George Gordon Byron stood 1.74 meters tall, with a lame right leg, brown hair, a permanent pallor, gray eyes framed with dark eyelashes, and a charm that no one could resist, neither man nor woman.

Everything about him was a contradiction, a mystic and an outsider, beautiful yet deformed, serious and ridiculous, extravagant yet sometimes miserly and possessed by a wild intellect, yet trapped in the malice and mischief of a child.

He was also a gigantic poet, but, as he reminds us, poetry is a distinct gift and has little to do with the personal life of its creator.

The vibrant biography by Edna O'Brien is marked by a stark beauty, is exemplary in its accuracy, and focuses on the many and varied women who passed through Byron's life.

The narrative core is the love triangle between him, his wife, and his half-sister - a relationship that forever destroyed his reputation.