Dr. Kate Lister

I mean, Byron definitely ran with it, but Don Juan was a legendary figure before that.

Byron's Don Juan definitely added some more spice to the mix.

He kind of, in the same way that he identified with this child Harold character, I mean, Byron is the ultimate Don Juan, isn't he?

He's been obsessed with Greek independence for a while.

When he was a young man, early 20s, he spent a lot of time in Greece, pestering the locals more than anything else.

But he had a real sense of Greek identity, of Greek independence.

He was really angry when Lord Elgin took the marbles from the Parthenon.

He wrote quite extensively about that.

He thought that that was absolutely hideous and diabolical, that these treasures would be removed from Greece just to teach English people how to do architecture.

He was really angry about that.

So he's already got quite a fiercely protective attitude to Greece and to Greek culture.

It's something he identifies with a lot.

And there's a war for Greek independence.

And it's almost inevitable that he's going to get caught up in this.

Because you get a sense of Byron as he's getting older, because he's in his mid-30s at this point.

He's bored and he's restless and he wants something more than being a poet.

There's a sense that he wants to achieve something with his life.

He's never satisfied with what he's got.

And he gets this idea that he wants to be a war hero, which is, again, it's an odd thing for him because in his poems, he's very anti-war.

But at the same time, he loved Napoleon.