New Book- Dangerous to Show: Byron and His Portraits

Press Release

Dangerous to Show: Byron and His Portraits – Geoffrey Bond and Christine Kenyon Jones

Published October 2020, Hardback, £25 

‘Don’t look at him. He is dangerous to look at,’ Lady Liddell instructed her daughter on seeing Byron in Rome in 1817. Handsome, charismatic, and allegedly ‘mad – bad – and dangerous to know’, Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) was the world’s first modern celebrity, and this book is the first to explore the importance of the visual aspects of that celebrity and show them in full colour.  Dangerous to Show not only tells Byron’s compelling life-story through the paintings and sculptures that were made face-to-face with him, and shows a number of portraits not published before, but also explores the way in which Byron’s image was advertised and immortalized through memorabilia ranging from heroic medals to tie-pins, and from satirical cartoons to puzzle-prints.  The book is beautifully designed by Ocky Murray, from the eighth generation of the John Murray family who were Byron’s famous publishers. 

‘You do not have to be a Byromaniac to enjoy this sparkling survey of his Lordship’s wildly shifting iconography through two centuries of celebrity and notoriety. The fantastic transformation of Byron’s image, from solemn portraiture to souvenir pottery, from memorabilia to merchandising, from marble to mockery, from miniatures to movies (I could go on) is constantly surprising and instructive. It’s also a great deal of fun, a brilliant revelation of poetic fashions and fandom. The authors successfully combine scholarship with mischief, and throw fresh light on the enduring provocations of Byron’s poetry and personality, not least the astonishing fact that he was not admitted to Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey until 1969.’

Richard Holmes, biographer and critic

For more on Byron, check out his ancestral home of Newstead Abbey and the Byron Society. 

Geoffrey Bond, a former Chairman of the Byron Society and an expert on Byroniana, is author of Lord Byron’s Best Friends (a study of Byron and his dogs). He lives in the Nottinghamshire manor house that was Byron’s home from 1803 to 1808. He has made many contributions to Byron studies and is a well-known figure in the law, broadcasting and business and in the City of London. 

Dr Christine Kenyon Jones is a writer and lecturer, and a Research Fellow in the Department of English at King’s College London. She has published on Byron’s politics and his pronunciation; his disability and his dieting; his religious background and his afterlife as a science fiction character. Her previous books include Kindred Brutes and Byron: The Image of the Poet.