Word: missolonghi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Byron died in 1824 of a fever, on a mud flat called Missolonghi, before he could do any fighting but not before most of his treasure had disappeared. His death, otherwise futile, stimulated English interest in the war. Two large bond issues were floated to help the Greeks, the proceeds of which were embezzled in London and stolen in Greece...
...poet Swinburne, who in real life had curious difficulties with the opposite sex, is killed while adventuring in the royal seraglio. The scandal is smoothed over, however, partly because of the good feeling left by the fervently pro-Moorish writings of Lord Byron, who does not die at Missolonghi in 1824, according to Guedalla, but lives on in Granada until...
Byron also survives his Missolonghi fever in a wicked imagining by Harold Nicholson, who in his essay has the poet fumble on till 1854-as nothing less than King George I of Greece, "an obese little man descending the steps of the Crystal Palace on his wooden leg, supporting himself on his famous umbrella, and clasping a huge red handkerchief in the other hand." The wooden leg has replaced the clubfoot of Byron's dashing early years, which the poet-King lost, along with all vestiges of poetic vision, while fighting ineptly against the Turks near Lepanto...