Antony Peattie

"Poor Byron, to be reduced to our labelling" (Arthur Crisp). Takes the speculation (dating at least to 1990's Lord Byron's Relish, Wilma Paterson) that B had an eating disorder and runs wild with it. (That he had a disordered relationship with food is something I wouldn't dispute at all, but all this retroactive and detailed diagnosticating tends to strike me sideways. For instance, I was fascinated by Touched with Fire and the speculation that B may have been bipolar, but was irritated by Grosskurth's biography painting her diagnostic brush over everything just as if the diagnosis were fact. An interesting hypothesis emerges and the dilettantes rush in.) Was he anorexic? Maybe...probably...possibly...So? I don't know. An odd, reductive (no pun intended) book.… (mehr)