Description

Of the many accounts of Lord Byron's mission to Greece and his death at Missolonghi in 1824, very few were by eyewitnesses. In this 1825 book, William Parry (1773-1859) describes in detail Byron's last days, and records the poet's wishes and intentions with regard to the Greek independence movement. Parry was working in the naval dockyard at Greenwich when he was recruited by the London Greek Committee to organise an artillery brigade to join Byron in Greece. The original plan was scaled down, but in February 1824 Parry and some companions arrived in Missolonghi. Byron took to him, and Parry, effectively his right-hand man, was with him when he died. His book is in part a score-settling activity against the opposing factions of the Committee both in Greece and England, but it is also an important and detailed account of the death, and of the creation of a myth.