He was smart, bisexual, funny, cynical, daring, vivid, his poems sold tens of thousands on day of publication and went on to grip a generation all across Revolutionary Europe: so why does the BBC insist Byron be read in vague RADA mumbles by a wan queue of second-tier Hugh Grantoids? Because it’s poetry, and poetry’s posh? Because Byron was handsome, and Jack Davenport and Toby Stephens are the best they can scare up? Listen to a British movie from the 30s: that’s how bizarre upper-class accents were just 80 years ago. Byron died 180 years ago, a real actual aristo who took his seat in the House of Lords, Sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale. Admittedly he was brought up mainly by his difficult mama in Aberdeen: even less reason, one would think, to favour heritage listlessness over raging or comic or ANY KIND of energy…