Lord Byron: Mad, Bad & Dangerous To Know | Part 1
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- Опубліковано 10 січ 2025
- Few lives from history can have contained as many strange and exciting strands as that of Lord Byron's, whose story reflects the great dramas of the Napoleonic era. A vampiric hero of devilish charisma; a martyr for liberty, a licentious lothario; Byron’s cultural and literary impact cannot be underestimated. The remarkable course of his life, and his mercurial nature can in part be explained by the dark events of his childhood, and the outlandish history of his own family. Born with a club foot - his “satanic mark” - to “Mad Jack” Byron, a former gigolo dogged by incest and financial ruin, and an unpredictable mother, a strange curse seemed to lie over the family. Impoverished before the inheritance of his title and a romantic ruin in Nottinghamshire, the plump and provincial boy would finally find solace at school and university, where he transformed into the glamorous rake he would become. There too would he discover the dubious sexual passions that would haunt his life…
Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the diabolic history of the Byron family, and the young Byron’s birth, troubled upbringing, and controversial adolescence.
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Tom is just so great in his ability to link together similar bits of stuff from different historical eras - like finding two errant socks, the one we know of in the sock drawer, and the other gunky one, fished out from under the fridge, and then showing us how they - in fact - are still very much a match.
Only K'necht!
♥️👍
i don't doubt that this is somewhat owed to his earlier literary studies
My favourite podcast keeps getting better 🎉
If you're enjoying the content on this channel please remember to hit the subscribe button (if you haven't already), it really helps the channel out!
You guys should do an episode on Yukio Mishima for your next literary figure.
I'm not subscribing because your guest (a typical xenophobe Englishman) doesn't know how to pronounce "Don Juan," as any American can do.
Of course we have plenty of Spanish-speaking people here and apparently that's not the case in good old Blighty.
It reminds me of radio BBC 4 when I used to live in England.
I didn't know about Vampire Byron but that was done by Ann Rice: An interview with a vampire, wasn't it?
Sympathy with the Devil was the last song in the film too. It was a shame that the film was not made when Brad Pitt wasn''t slightly older or someone taller didn't play Lestat.
None the less, despite all the Scientology none-sense, he WAS a great actor.
Just found your channel today.Seems right up my alley. I am a poet and a lover of history.
@@susanmercurio1060I think you’ll find that it’s deliberate. The English also pronounce ‘Don Quixote’ as Don Kwiksott. The French do the same. In fact ‘Don Juan’ in France is ‘Don Jean’.
utterly enjoyable to listen to. Very good timing too. Since I'm going to a series of Byronic talks at the British Library tomorrow. Thank you so much. 🐻🦁
Please visit Newstead and take the guided tour.
Please visit Newstead and take the guided tour, you won't regret it.
Great subject! You guys have done it again….
I have gone to sleep many a night, listening to the poetry of Lord Byron. He inspires my poetry and my dreams.
You two are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. 😀
To be clear: I love it! 😉
Like a box of opened chocolate never leave these gentlemen out in the noon day sun.
I've lived my life in the Australian town Byron Bay... captain Cook named it after his homie foul weather jack.... many years later when the town planners came to name the streets in the town, they mistakenly supposed that the town was named for Lord Byron the poet (rather than his grand father) and went and named the streets after poets! Tennyson, keats, Shelly etc..etc..
Sounds like a stroke of serendipity, to me at least.
So residents were spared Foulweather Street 😊 didn't know that, thanks
@@birchlover3377 i should petition for it... there's a new development
That's pretty cool
Interesting...
I don't know why it took this long for UA-cam to send these guys my way. I'm obsessed.
Love the idea of a pod on Mary Shelley.
Definitely
Mary Shelley was a very shallow person. I read all of her letters. And Byron did not like her - which is saying enough for me.
Love the idea of sending T Swift to Ukraine
For us Greeks, he is a great hero, a philhellene.
❤
I’ve just come across this channel and I’m loving the information, in combination with the observations and dry humour.
Many thanks!
The same with me, neenaj! How have I failed to lock onto this before? What a tonic. No gimmicks, no hype, and plenty of good-humoured perspective.
i just discovered you guys! Love it -- make sure you discuss Ada Lovelace, his daughter!
Is the name Ada short for Ellada?
The Rest is History is my favorite podcast. I listen to some of the episodes several times. The greatest part is that you are quite funny and laugh at the absurdity of these people.I only now found out that you are live on UA-cam. I listen in the evening in my bed.
Thanks
Love the show! Please do a series on Giacomo Casanova
He was and still is one and only.
I adore his poetry ❤❤❤❤
Lord Byron used to regularly visit Cefn Ila in Usk, Wales to see his friend Trelawny who bought the place. Percy Shelly visited too. Eventually it was turned into a maternity home. I know this because I was born at Cefn Ila. Sadly it burned down in the 60s. But its become a lovely woodland Trust now
Frankly I knew close to nothing about Lord Byron apart from his reputation. After I enjoyed your 4-part-podcast I have the feeling I've read hundreds of pages about his life and works. All that with a healthy pinch of dry British humour which I love. A big thanks from Germany. I'd love to listen to similar episodes about Keats, Blake, Tennyson or Yeats.
I read the Vision of Judgment a few days ago and was astonished by how brilliant he is. Love or hate the man, he was a genius.
Only just found your channel whilst searching for info on Lord Byron, as I knew almost nothing about him. Very informative, and I love your style 😊
I live next to Gight (pronounced like ‘kicked’, but beginning with a G) Castle in Aberdeenshire and loved that it was mentioned as Byrons childhood home on my favourite pod. Its a lovely ruin in rolling countryside now but it must have been grim in the eighteenth century..
Wasn't Benjamin Franklin a world wide or at least Europe wide celebrity before this? Or was that a case of lower expectations? "Benjamin Franklin was a huge celebrity... you know... for an American." He even got a surprising amount of attention from women. Which is more impressive given he looked objectively horrible at the time. Like some rock stars we wonder at in our time.
Really enjoying this one. I know the name but know little else about Lord Byron. Looking forward to more of a deep dive into this interesting and unsettling historical figure.
American’s have to always be “number #1” 😂😂😂 the inferiority complexity is hilarious
Strolling thru Rome one day, wondering where I was, looked up to read the street sign and etched into the old palazzo was “Via Benjamin Franklin.” Yes- they loved him too
Thanks!
Ooh this is great! Do William Blake soon please!
Indeed!OH yes!
Just found your channel... love it. Looking forward to many bedtime catch ups in your catalogue.
Brilliant podcast, and loving the video component. Cheers, gentlemen. Keep up the good work!
Love all the podcasts, keep it up!
An episode on 'Foul Weather Jack' Byron, the wreck of the Wager or Anson's voyage in general would make a great episode or two.
Historical without a doubt. I will be back...from Ireland. Thank you both.
Haven't yet seen all this podcast and so far not disappointed. But, on the point of Byron being the first international celebrity, Rick Wakeman did an interesting documentary but gave that accolade to Vivaldi if I remember.
Delightfully unsuitable lighting in one of those rooms. Love it!
My favourite podcast....I'm obsessed!
Can you do a podcast session on Percy Shelly. Unlike Byron there are very few documentaries on Shelly”s life. So if you do a podcast on him we can get more information about his extraordinary work and his life in general. Thanks
Thank you a million times! Love this podcast and will bingewatch obviously parts 2 and 3. It is so funny because Byron is quite famous in Greece (I'm Greek myself), but Greeks know next to nothing of his character and biography. They kind of view of him as a saint which is so ironic...Thank you, obviously I subscribed immediately.
Paul murdered Christians. But he is our Saint. The thief near Jesus that asked Sorry is Saint in paradise. The other one that didn't ask any Sorry for his crimes in.his life he isn't in paradise. Now think what Jesus wants from us. For us his personal life doesn't mean anything because he was a Free man with free spirit and..life probably. A sinner like everyone and all of us.
I am hooked on the rest is politics, football now history!!
I was trying to imitate Lord Byron but perhaps the lack of good looks and desperation has caused me not to be so successful at it.
😂
Perhaps money is the one ingredient you lack to perfectly emulate Byron.
Byron became Lord Byron when inheriting title and estate upon death of his father.
Then a fabulous coal resource was discovered on land soon making Byron fabulously wealth.
My problem was lack of talent...
Mine is having a club Brian.
@@penelopehill9710It’s interesting how many famous poets/painters/musicians throughout history only became so because they had access to money and connections, and how literally nothing has changed, and yet so many fall for the lie that only talent is required.
Thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating!
Very enjoyable podcast
“Fancy a bit of Methodism?” 🤣🤣🤣
Rewatching this series again, so fascinating.
This pair really pick some great subjects to discuss
so glad i stumbled across your channel Love it....need more
This really is the best thing on the internet
Outraged at the suggestion Nottinghamshire/Mansfield isn't glamorous
"Why is he sleeping with his sister?"
"She has lots of money"
1/2 sister
Actually his half-sister was very poor. Married to an abusing idiot.
His half-sister was very poor. Married to an aristocratic idiot. Inform yourself.
@lorenzo6mm That makes it okay then does it?
@@christineduffy3113 1/2 okay
"A mad rake".... Unfortunately I only have one friend who might get it, the rest would think it would be some pissed off garden tool.
Thank you so much for your work and willingness to share knowledge and interesting information with your community!🧑🏼🏫
Excellent! Been a while since someone reminded me of Lord Byron.
Lots of blather about what they're gonna talk about. They actually start talking history at 20:00. I guess that's where The REST is history come from. Really enjoyed a lot of the chin wagging, especially such details as distinguishing among 'cad', 'bounder', and 'rotter'! Love your language, good show!
I listened to the end, who doesn't? I don't usually but this was fascinating. I had a good teacher for 2 years in the early 70s and Byron lorden over all. I hope to creep back for more, if that's ok - My mind needs to be taken off the west Irish relentless rain.
Heard them all and they are all ripping. Even in this current climate still utterly shocking.
Still waiting to hear if you’ll do a series on the Lunar Society tho. Keep dropping hints. Darwin. Wedgewood. Watt. The list goes on
I live for your podcasts!! 💥
So glad I found your channel! Im hooked.
Were it not for Byron, his questionable influence, and a rainy evening on the lake, there would be no Frankenstein. 'Nuff said!
How often has any culture been lucky to have Woman start new ideas. Islam started with Mohammeds wife in a way!She is so rarely talked about.
@@MrInterestingthings Chicks get short shrift. It isn't fair! Women are magic...
Wait who is Nuff?
@@CommieGobeldygook Nuff is a cinematographer who worked on the film "Mary Shelley". He made this remark on set, and Mary Elle shared it with me later...
@afwalker1921 That is very interesting, I didnt know that thank you. I'll put it in my essay
37:42 What kind of question is this? He's ten, of course it is against his will. He cannot consent. A child doesn't have the responsibility of refusing sexual activity. The nurse mais, the adult, was the one who should have kept her hands off of him.
I was eleven when my step-dad came into my room, pulled back my covers, and leaned close to me. I woke up and told him, "If you touch me, I will tell." He didn't touch me. I had learned to say, "No" two years earlier and the power of my 'no' has protected me ever since.
@@tw2987I'm sorry that happened to you and that is very fortunate you said no and they walked away. Yet no child should be in that situation. My comment was about the question of "consent" the adults always are in the wrong when it comes to a child. Consent doesn't exist when they are a child, it's just abuse. What happened to you was a form of abuse regardless of them leaving that night because I'd imagine you then lived in fear or anxiety.
Also some children do say No and still are manipulated or threatened by the person abusing them. The onus should never be on the child but on the adult.
Great podcast.
Much better thumbnail!
:)
"Mad, Bad & Dangerous To Know"
That did not stop people from wanting to know him. In fact, it only made him more attractive.
Kudos to you both for a not only informative, but entertaining series. Byron was a fascinating character indeed! Just a thought….a piece on Gordon of Khartoum?
Superb!!
Very interesting and entertaining. Thank you.
love the episode, love you both, but Tom pronouncing “Don Juan” with the “J” sound not as “Rruán” is getting to me 😂 took me a while to understand what he was saying tbh
Don what? 😂
Great podcast though!
Byron was a regency rock star.
So good!
I appreciate Dominic Sandbrook..Nearly always interesting and amusing 🙂
I would argue for Rupert Brooke as the most beloved European figure in Greece. His grave site on Skyros is a tremendously moving place. That aside, I love this profile of Byron. Well done.
Both Byron and Brooke died of illness rather than 'heroically' in combat, fighting an oppressive occupying power, but it has never detracted from their allure.
He brought guns money support and soldiers in Greece to set us free from Islamofascists Nazi turks? Yes. So he is our hero. We don't care for his personal life. Only God has the right to criticize him and everyone èlse
Amazing. Every comment is written in perfect English. Coincidence? I think not.
Lord Byron was ME when we arrived in Venice during Carnivale in January of '93 and proceeded to drink 🍸 & deabauch our way across every sestiere & campo we could. Then, one day, I got tired of sleeping on the couch in the LR of the place I'd arranged for us from back home, and I growled at Titsworth, "I'm taking the bedroom. You're on the couch." And in that bedroom, on my first night in 2 months of not drinking for 12 hours, was a copy of Jeannette Winterson's The Passion, and we read it in one sitting, and it changed our life. Such is the way of good words, since all is either perception or opinion. *waves*
I thought Tom only spoke this way about Cesar ! 😂
19 Aπριλη 2024, σαν σημερα συμπληρώνονται ακριβως 200 χρονια απο το θανατο του Λορδου Βυρωνα στο Μεσολόγγι. Ο Βύρωνας εδωσε τη ζωη του για την Ελλαδα, και το ονομα του στη γειτονια του Βυρωνα, στην Αθήνα. Ο Λόρδος Βύρωνας ειναι ο καλύτερος αγγλος ποιητης του 19ου αιώνα.
That would be Keats, surely.
Let's fight!
GUYS, WHAT PART OF "MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW" CAUSES YOU CONFUSION?
How about Seamus Heaney`s translation of Beowulf mate?
As an Albanian, i first heard about him when they used to talk about his travels to Albania.
Because most of your leaders were in the other side. With Othomans turks Mongols from Turan in Central Asia that slaughter not only midst (till now) but everyone in Ainos peninsula-that named Balkans. Of course many Albanians fought against Othomans but few of them..
I'm thinking, Jim Morrison?
I'm thinking, Jiimy Cricket or Jimmy Kranky.?
what a fantastic postcast
Byron highlights how the human imagination often outshines reality. Especially when an epoch approaches a supremely decadent phase.
His infamous club foot meant he lurched into rooms. Some say, due to his foot... he was fat due to inactivity.
Many men on first seeing him... openly laughed.
When I was at a C of E Girls School in Surrey 1972-1976, we used to 'pashes'. It was usual for a younger girl to have a pash for an older girl. It was a kind of hero worship, really. The older girl could be like a kind of kindly benefactor, giving the younger girl treats like biscuits, chatting to her, giving her good advice. Little girls at boarding schools lack a mother or an older sister, so the object of the pash probably played that role: the kind older female who actually listened to you.
Foul weather Jack sounds like the title of a song by The Fall
Watching from Alaska. 🤔
The lake behind my house in McLeod County Minnesota is named for him.
It isn't deep and motorboats are not allowed on it.
Fun facts
Do Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards.
I will learn from this. I know next to nothing about Byron....
“Poets these days tend not to be rock stars” is a narrow English academic view with a remarkable recent falsification. The Nobel prize committee acknowledged one rock star for his poetry, loved by both continental and American academics and a whole lot of ordinary people and rock stars. In case you still don’t get it, that was Bob Dylan. If poetry is sung, as anciently it was, it might get confused with “mere lyrics.”
Today, Bob is already from 40+ years ago.
I am related to Byron through the Gordon family my GGrandmother being Mary Gordon. I always thought that was why many of us suffer from mental illness including Manic Depression, which runs through our family. I dontr have MD but do have depressive illness and had a breakdown when my Mum died. I have been to Byron's grave in Hucknall ( if I remember correctly) and laid a white rose.
Ohhbintersteing ive heard rumors. Excited to hear
Bounder, rotter, cad.....are there Wiki definitions and rankings for these terms? 😁
Byronmania! Like Beatlemania. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah yeah.
Screamin' Lord Byron... the Byronic Man!
Yes. Byron was a phonomena.
Byron's lyrics were rather better, and although the gothicity (if that isn't a word, it should be) is often over the top, at least he never promulgated obscurantist nonsense such as we see in some of the Beatles' later efforts regarding semolina pilchards, etc.
@@sarahsnowe But what if I am the walrus?
Rather disconcertingly wistful gaze you’re casting over Byron in the thumb nail…even in death it seems his attraction persists!
3 mistresses is a little excessive! Ha!😮
Are there any decent movies made about Byron? I know of one or two, concerning the Year Without a Summer and Mary Shelley, but I don’t think they good reviews…
Wikipedia have some interesting facts
He was unable to dance because of his club foot which limited him heavily with his social engagements
His half sister looked a lot like him
He stepped on very dangerous grounds because of a lack of sexual identity, specially in his country
Rich by birth, baron at 10
The lines that hit me the most were his lasts:
"Seek thou lest often sought than found, the soldier's grave, for thee the best
Then look around, & choose thy ground
& take thy rest"
Same article adds that he died due to a weakened immune system aggravated by a bloodlet, a practice used at the time
A painting also appears of him in his deathbed
Not rich at birth. Byron's father squandered his mother's money, then died when Byron was about 3.
He was born 4 days before the founding of Australia. My country
Nearly every town in Greece has a street named after Byron. The Greek independence cause (and maybe even modern Greece) would not be known without him.
I look at this from the opposite side of the spectrum .As an older person without a car, for my daily exercise and my mental health i walk a minimum of a mile a day i can see my self trying to run across those roads 😮 one of the worst memories of COVID for friends was seeing no one si getting ti walk safely was a it.
This is fun - but the gay thing is totally exaggerated and overplayed - he was not skulking around London worried he was going to be put in the pillory - he was just a classic English public schoolboy
Speaking of strange names, my great uncle's given name was Starless Samuel. I assumed he would have gone by Samuel but my great aunt, when asked about him, said "Oh, uncle Starless. I remember him." All the other boys were named after presidents, but there was a sister named Dakota Rose. No she wasn't a dancer in a wild west saloon.
Well... perhaps it says something about the times we live in, or just about me, but I' would much rather listen to 1970s' politics than about "romantic" "heroes" such as Lord Byron. And I love poetry!
With debilitating money issues , with travel being costly, with not earning a living while doing it, how did he afford to travel as solution to major financial worries?
Was the Don Juan pronunciation deliberately anglicised?
What is the best biography of Byron?
The Life of Erroll Flynn! 😎
I'm wondering what Byron would have made of Bruce Lee?!
A no rules Bear prize fighter
Probably