The Life and Death of Lord Byron - A New Play in Two Acts (Paperback)

In the mid-1950s I arranged with the Guatemalan government to travel to the country to gather material for a book describing the much belated social, economic and cultural reforms being introduced by the Arbenz administration. I devoted many months to preparing myself for my visit and took intensive private lessons to improve my command of Spanish. Alarmed at the democratic policies that threatened the power and influence of the local oligarchs as well as of the United Fruit Company, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, warned of a "communist threat" in Central America, and the CIA staged a coup and overthrew the regime. There followed decades of repression and of mass murder of the indigenous Indian population. I, of course, called off my visit to Guatemala. Several months later, browsing in a second-hand bookstore, I found a book published in 1829 and entitled History of the Greek Revolution. In an appendix to the book was an account of "The Last Days of Lord Byron." I read these pages, standing in the store, and exclaimed to myself, "This is a story as dramatic as Joan of Arc's." This play is the result of the encounter.