What Lord Byron (really) did for Greece

As King’s prepares to host the 39th International Byron Conference (1-6 July) on the theme, ‘Byron: the poetry of politics and the politics of poetry’, CHS director Roderick Beaton publishes his latest book, Byron’s war: Romantic rebellion, Greek revolution. The book is the result of three years of research in archives and libraries in London, Edinburgh and Athens and was made possible by a Major Leverhulme Fellowship. 

Byron’s War re-examines Byron’s life and writing to lay bare the long, conflicted trajectory that begins with the poet’s youthful travels in 1809-1811, continues through his years of fame in London and self-imposed exile in Italy, to the decision, reached in the summer of 1823, to devote himself to the cause of Greek independence. The book’s second half documents Byron’s dramatic self-transformation, while in Cephalonia, from Romantic rebel to ‘new statesman’, subordinating himself for the first time to a defined, political cause, in order to begin laying the foundations, during his ‘hundred days’ at Missolonghi, for a new kind of polity in Europe – that of the nation-state as we know it today. Byron’s War draws extensively on Greek historical sources and other unpublished documents, to tell an individual story that also offers a new understanding of the origin of the present-day Greek state. 

Of Byron’s War, David Roessel (author of In Byron’s shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American imagination, 2002) writes: “There is nothing else like this book, for Beaton stands alone in his knowledge not just of the English and Greek sources, but also of the English and Greek contemporary context. Byron’s War changes our understanding of what Byron was trying to do in Greece, and will be the starting point for all subsequent discussions of the topic.” 

Byron’s War was published in the UK by Cambridge University Press on 25 April and will be available in the US in June. 

Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution (CUP, April 2013): http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item7127689/?site_locale=en_GB