Living amongst the richest people of the highest strata of London Society and being fallen over by its glamorous women, Lord Byron, the "Idol Poet" of his time, has never quite got over the raw emotions of his unrequited love for his country cousin Mary Chaworth.
Until they meet again, and Mary finds new hope for a happier life with the man she had once rejected as a teenage boy, and now deeply loves.
Byron brings down the wrath of the newspapers for using his poetry to criticise the bloated Prince Regent, and speak up for the starving English poor; but the attacks on his name do not trouble him at all.
Although he remains troubled by Lady Caroline Lamb, who is now stick-thin and gaunt-faced from the pain of her insane love for him; hiding in his publisher's waiting room and sneakily following him through the streets, until he complains in a letter to Lady Melbourne - "I am being haunted by a skeleton!"
A story full of humour and drama and colourful events and people from the Regency era, including Beau Brummell; the courtesan Harriette Wilson, and so many others - all mad and bad and delightful to know.