'Byron's letters are among the most spirited in the English language, and are irresistible. They amount to an autobiography of the duelling kind. 'V. S. Pritchett None can know what was lost when Byron's autobiography was reduced to ashes in John Murray's Albermarle Street fireplace, but some clue must lie in this distillation of the wealth of letters and journals of the poet branded 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'. Here is proof that none portrays Byron so vividly as he portrays himself. He gives us a chronicle of the heady years of fame and of the scandals that drove him so bitterly from England, first to Switzerland with Shelley, on to Venice 'so late into the night' and finally to Greece 'in Freedom's battle' and death in Mossolonghi. 'What a feast of a life actually in the process of being lived these letters have provided. They breathe the very spirit of the man, and they bring Byron and his circle of friends before our eyes as no biography has ever done or can ever hope to do' Robert Nye. Guardian