Being a ‘genius’ now seems also a licence to be badly behaved

Lady Caroline Lamb would have loved social media. She would have been a highly-paid fashion influencer, offering tips like “spray a fine mist of water on your gauzy gown, before you go out for the night, because the mist will make it cling to your body in a way that’s to die for”.

She might have been like the influencer who posed on her bed with a bottle of Listerine in the background and was excoriated on social media, as if she, her bed, and the mouthwash were harbingers of World War III. But what’s an excoriation between friends? Nothing, if you are as rich and reckless as was Lady Caroline.

She was up for anything in breeches, but particularly up for Lord Byron, for whom the delights she offered in bed were speedily outweighed by her craziness everywhere else.