A recently published work of reference tells us: ‘Greece enlisted the help of liberal admirers across Europe in its war for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and volunteers like the English Romantic poet Lord Byron answered the call to arms, inspired by the thought of liberating the first democracy of the ancient world’. The ‘Byron as revolutionary’ school cites his support of Italian and Greek independence, but he never said he wanted revolution. He might more accurately be said to have supported anti-colonial nationalism in three occupied countries of the Mediterranean, not necessarily a good thing. After his death, the myth of Byron as ‘noble warrior’ killed in the cause of Greek freedom granted respectability to the militant nationalism which was to be ‘the most divisive and destructive element in Western civilisation’.