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Byron: Life and Legend

Fiona MacCarthy

John Murray

pounds 25

674pp

SCANDAL AND intrigue made Byron a star in his own lifetime - and in ours. Fiona MacCarthy's is the sixth biography to appear in as many years. And who can begrudge such an extraordinary life its enduring fascination? Born with a club foot, Byron was the victim of what we would now call childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his nurse. He kept a tame bear in his rooms at Cambridge (there were rules against dogs); had an affair with his half-sister Augusta and countless other liaisons with members of both sexes; swam the Hellespont and the Tagus; exiled himself from …