Trinity College Cambridge will host a two-day event to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron’s death on 19 April 1824, in Missolonghi, Greece. Byron was a student at Trinity College and is one of its most celebrated alumni.
While enrolled as an undergraduate, Byron published his collection of poetry, Hours of Idleness, and began the satirical poem that would become English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a scathing provocation of the literary establishment.

Described by the College’s Senior Tutor of the time as a ‘young man of tumultuous passions’, Byron became one of the most controversial, celebrated, and influential poets of his age. When Westminster Abbey declined to accept the magnificent statue of Byron, created after his death by the Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen, Trinity gave it a home in the  Wren Library, where the poet still stands — an impressive presence for students, scholars and visitors.

But what kinds of presence does Byron have now? This question is the focus of an exciting programme of talks, readings, music and exhibited work, which will address, and mediate, the legacy and status of Byron now, within the contexts of today’s culture and scholarship.

The programme includes:

• Talks about Byron, by academics and writers including Bernard Beatty, Drummond Bone, Clare Bucknell, Will Bowers, Christine Kenyon Jones, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Seamus Perry, Adam Phillips, Diego Saglia, Dan Sperrin, Jane Stabler, A.E. Stallings, Andrew Stauffer, Corin Throsby, Clara Tuite, Ross Wilson.
• A concert featuring settings of Byron’s poems by Schumann, Wolf and others including Hugh Wood, and a newly commissioned piece composed by Judith Weir, the Master of the King’s Music and Honorary Fellow of Trinity.
• An exhibition in the Wren Library centred around Trinity College’s extensive Byron collection, including original manuscripts, letters and first editions of works by Byron and his circle, plus new art responding to Byron.
• Readings of newly commissioned work by various writers.

For any further information or queries please email byron2024@trin.cam.ac.uk

Full Programme:

Friday 19 April

09:45 – 11:00
Welcome
Byron and uncertainty:

• Drummond Bone ‘Byron and Uncertainty: Don Juan Cantos I and XVII’
• Clare Bucknell ‘Byron-ic’

11:00 – 11:15
Coffee break

11:15 – 12:15
Byron, travel and Italy:

• Will Bowers ‘‘frequent turn to linger as you go’: Byron plays Guide’
• Diego Saglia ‘‘As it were from another world’: Byron in Ravenna – the Local Cosmopolitan’

12:30
Event, Wren Library

13:00 – 14:00
Lunch break

14:00 – 15:00
Byron and the archive:

• Mathelinda Nabugodi ‘Byron Boiteaux’
• Jane Stabler ‘Byron and his manuscripts’

15:00 – 16:00
Byron and other poets:

• A.E. Stallings ‘Byron and the Greek poets’
• Seamus Perry ‘‘Prose is Verse and Verse is merely Prose’: Byron and Wordsworth’

16:00 – 16:15
Tea break

16:15 – 17:15
Byron Now:

• Bernard Beatty ‘Byron’s ‘Nows’ and ‘Moments’’
• Clara Tuite ‘‘His alpha beta better’: What Byron teaches now’

17:30 – 18:45
Music Recital in the Chapel:

• Malcom Martineau (piano)
• Lorna Anderson (soprano)
• Florian Störtz (baritone)
• Pip Torrens (reader)

18:45 – 19:30
Reception in the Master’s Lodge

19:30
Dinner in Hall, with address by Robin, Lord Byron

Saturday 20 April

10:00 – 11:00
Byron Then and Now:

• Andrew Stauffer ‘Byron at Trinity’
• Corin Throsby ‘Byron and Social Networking’

11:00 – 11:15
Coffee break

11:15 – 12:15
Byron’s Biography:

• Adam Phillips ‘Byron’s Incontinence’
• Ross Wilson ‘Byron, Reactionary Bourgeois?’

12:30 – 13:30
Lunch break

13:30 – 14:30
Exhibiting Byron:

• An introduction to Byron collections and new art in the Wren Library including:
• Christine Kenyon Jones ‘Thorvaldsen’s Statue of Byron’
• Dan Sperrin ‘Illustrating Don Juan’

14:45 – 15:45
Byron Now. A Roundtable:

• Including Jonathan Bate, Andrew Stauffer, Jane Stabler, Clara Tuite

15:45 – 16:00
Tea break

16:00 – 17:15
New poetry and readings:

• New poems composed in response to Byron including: Mona Arshi, Adam Crothers, Parwana Fayyaz, Mina Gorji, Peter Graham, Gregory Leadbetter, Angela Leighton, Stav Poleg, Michael Symmons Roberts, A.E. Stallings, Rebecca Watts, and current students
   

17:30 – 18:00
Byron in the Ante-Chapel: closing drinks reception