by Gretta Curran Browne (Author)
Two people - married unhappily to others - but desperately in love with each other, living in a time when wedlock was a padlock for life, with no opening key.For Lord Byron, Teresa Guiccioli is not his only desperate love; he also loves Italy, and cares for the Italian people now under the crushing rule of Austria. Can he fight the Austrians with scathing poetry, or join the secret Italian organisation of the 'Carbonari' who are preparing to take back their country with war?Yet it is while he is in Italy that his own nation of Britain makes a huge political request of him - insisting he is the only man who can do it - and so once again he dons the red military uniform of a commissioned British officer and leave Italy for Greece, knowing that the hardest stage of his journey still stretches ahead."There was a helplessness about Byron, a sort of abandonment of himself to his "destiny" as he called it. He believed in Fate, and when Fate spoke to him clearly, he always answered the call." --- Quinnell.