Viva Byron!

<p>'<em>Bold bewitching and a touch dangerous - like Lord Byron himself</em>' Benedict Allen</p><p></p><p><em>'Hugh Thomson is a mesmerising storyteller' </em>Sara Wheeler</p><p></p><p>What would have happened if the poet Lord Byron had not died an early death in Greece?</p><p>But instead had lived - and then some - by doing what his letters show he always wanted to do.</p><p>Escape to South America with the great last love of his life Countess Teresa Guiccioli and help Simon Bolivar liberate it from the Spanish.</p><p>This great sweep of a novel imagines just that and takes the poet and his lover into a New World of the Americas where nothing is ever quite as they expect.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Hugh Thomson</strong> is an award-winning writer whose previous books have explored the world from Peru to England and whose films have been nominated for a <em>BAFTA</em>.</p><p></p><p><em>The White Rock</em> and <em>Cochineal Red </em>were about his search for Inca ruins; <em>Nanda Devi </em>a journey to a wild and usually forbidden part of the Himalaya; while his memoir <em>Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico</em> was serialised by BBC Radio 4.</p><p></p><p>He returned home for <em>The Green Road into the Trees</em> which won the inaugural <em>Wainwright Prize for Best Nature and Travel Writing</em>. 'An immensely enjoyable book: curious articulate intellectually playful and savagely candid.' <em> Spectator.</em></p><p></p><p>Everywhere Thomson goes he finds good stories to tell. <em>New York Times Book Review </em></p><p></p><p>'He takes the reader to places we may not have dreamed of going - places of geography the spirit and the emotions.'<em> Independent</em></p>