There was not a seat left when Professor Roderick Beaton (Centre for Hellenic Studies Director, King’s College) gave a most inspiring and knowledgeable talk, recently, on Byron and the Greek Revolution (with stunning multimedia backup) at the British Embassy Residence, in Athens. All done under the gaze of the man himself, listening and peering down, most aristocratically, from the well known Phillips portrait on the wall. The painting, pristine from cleaning, had recently returned from a whistle-stop tour of various institutions where it had been used to promote knowledge of Byron’s role in the 1825 Revolution.
As Professor Beaton himself states: ‘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 Byron’s War draws extensively on Greek historical sources and other unpublished documents, to tell an individual story that also offers a new understanding of the origin of the present-day Greek state.’The applause after the talk nearly rocked the walls. All of us, even those who have studied the period well, felt we had learnt something new and important about Byron’s life and role in the Greek Revolution. If you have the opportunity to read the book, I strongly urge you to do so. If, furthermore, you were lucky enough to attend the 39th International Byron Conference (1-6 July), at King’s, I also envy you, as I did not have the chance to go myself, this summer.
