It is perhaps the most celebrated house-party in the history of literary tittle-tattle: a two-house-party to be precise. Byron and his doctor/companion/whipping-boy John Polidori in the grand Villa Diodati overlooking Lake Geneva. The Shelleys (Percy and Mary) and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont a short walk away in the modest Maison Chapuis.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £20.00. Tel: 08430 600033. Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s life of Gabriele d’Annunzio, The Pike, won this year’s Samuel Johnson prize.
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