LADY CAROLINE LAMB LIVES ON in the collective memory as Byron’s spurned lover, the woman who coined a phrase when she called him “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. He, of course, was the impresario of his own personality cult, practically inventing the idea of literary celebrity. But she played out their tempestuous affair, and especially its break-up, at a pitch of operatic performativity that even he found too theatrical.
She famously stabbed herself at a ball (“ye dagger scene — of indifferent memory”, as he disdainfully put it). Another attempt to act out her pain and rage was more meticulously pre-planned and included theatrical extras. At Christmas 1812,
