MAD POETS SOCIETY...
ONE of his lovers famously said he was “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.
It’s 200 years this week since British romantic poet Lord Byron died, but his reputation for being a bit of a loony lives on.
And he’s not the only bard that may have been one stanza short of a full poem. Here looks at the habits of the wacky wordsmith and history’s other eccentric poets…
JAMES MOORE
As well as leading a racy sex life, Lord Byron kept a bear as a pet at college, plus a monkey and a badger. He also used to drink out of a human skull found at his ancestral home Newstead Abbey.
Percy Shelley hated cats. He once tied a poor moggy to a kite and flew it in a thunderstorm to electrocute the animal. He liked to make paper boats out of banknotes, but died on a real one that sank in 1822.
Daffodils writer William Wordsworth penned no poetry after being made official Poet Laureate in 1843. Instead, he once wallpapered an entire room with old newspapers.
Scottish poet Walter Scott is said to have owned a salt cellar made from a neck bone belonging to Charles I and composed the whole of his famous work Marmion while on horseback.
Alfred Tennyson found fame with his Crimean War poem The Charge Of The Light Brigade. His party trick was impersonating people going to the toilet.
Reclusive US poet Emily Dickinson (inset) always dressed in white, didn’t leave her home after the age of 30 and hid her poems, most of which were only discovered when she died.
William Blake was nicknamed the “Cockney nutcase”. He used to have imaginary chats with Julius Caesar.
Notorious drunk Dylan Thomas of Under Milk Wood fame barked like a dog when smashed, and is said to have announced “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies” just before dying in 1953.
WH Auden’s Stop All
The Clocks poem was famously read in the movie Four Weddings And A Funeral (left). Auden ( far left) had awful personal hygiene, fell out with JRR Tolkien after calling his home “hideous” and said he was “not an alcoholic, but a drunk”.