Name: Byron: Half a Scot by birth and bred a whole one
Start: 2025-09-13T14:30:00+01:00
End: 2025-09-13T16:00:00+01:00
Location: Haddo House, Methlick, AB41 7EQ Ellon, United Kingdom

In this year’s David & June Gordon Memorial Lecture, Byron: Half a Scot by birth and bred a whole one, Peter Hunter looks at Lord Byron’s Aberdeenshire roots and his connections with the Gordons of Haddo, before taking his audience on a journey to his early and heroic death in Greece aged 36. The talk is partly illustrated using rarely seen images of items from Harrow School: sabres and seals, carvings and cartoons, forgeries and freedom fighters.
Peter Hunter first studied the Poet seriously when cataloguing the collection of Byron manuscripts and artefacts at Harrow School, where he taught for 33 years. This autumn sees the publication of his co-edited book celebrating 50 years of Harrow’s Old Speech Room Gallery, where the Byron collection is displayed. He was for some years Chairman of the (London) Byron Society.
As a prelude to the talk, there will be a short piano and piano duet recital by Angus and Finlay Donohoe, who are both North East Scotland Music School scholarship students.
A new look at George Gordon, Lord Byron, his Aberdeen childhood and links with the Haddo Gordons. Illustrated with images from the collection at Harrow School, the sabres and seals, carvings and cartoons, forgeries and freedom fighters portray the poet notoriously described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.