Swimming with Lord Byron: A Biography

Swimming with Lord Byron: A Biography

"An endearing and at times uplifting read" — Times Literary Supplement Lord Byron may be the greatest writer you've never read. The biographer of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis tells the story of Britain's most glamorous and most tortured writer. He was rich and handsome. He was a swimmer and a poet. He loved both sexes. In his work he made a queer love life both thrilling and universal. He was born with a deformed right foot. An emotional hurt dating back to abuse when he was a boy also affected the man he became. But his hand moved on the page and his body in the water with ease and assurance. His is the story of transcending his disability and his childhood trauma in his verse. Byron's biography may shine a spotlight on your story too. The disappointments he felt in love, as well as the personal transformation he achieved in his work will strike a chord with anyone who is a reader, a writer, or a lover. What a marvellous title—and Bill Kuhn's book fully lives up to it! Pick up your towel and read along. —Robert Lacey, historical adviser to The Crown , author of biographies of Queen Elizabeth II and Grace of Monaco Byron's life was tragic in many ways, but I found this biography oddly uplifting since it speaks so eloquently to the human experience. —Elinor Florence, author of the bestselling novel, Bird's Eye View Presents a Byron worthy of today's generation that detests labels and embraces terms such as queer because of their built-in ambiguity. —Ritch Savin-Williams, emeritus professor of psychology, Cornell University, and author of Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity among Men Kuhn evokes Byron swimming in powerful and graceful strokes. He shows how Byron went from immorality to immortality. The book burns with a green crystal flame. —Sam Bompas, author and co-founder of Bompas & Parr, events, exhibitions, spectacles, the future of food and drink Swimming with Lord Byron 's easy, conversational style and its earnest reverence for its subject make it an endearing and at times uplifting read ... It may well fulfill its aim of introducing new readers to Byron's work. —Corin Throsby in the Times Literary Supplement