"Although reading private letters and journals should feel like snooping, something about the immediacy of Byron’s prose makes it seem, as in his poetry, that he is sharing an intimate secret or amusing anecdote intended just for us. After his wedding, he wrote to his new aunt Lady Melbourne to say it went well apart from the uncomfortable cushions in the church, “which were stuffed with Peach-stones I believe – and made me make a face that passed for Piety”." Colin Throsby TLS

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