Lord Byron's Doctor is one Polidori, the travelling companion, confidante and unwilling chronicler of George Gordon, Lord Byron. It is the year 1816 and Byron, driven out of England by scandalous allegations of incest with his sister, undertakes a debauched European Grande Tour to meet up with the Percy and Mary Shelly in Geneva. From austere Dutch towns to the mountains of Switzerland, the poet's most obsessive thoughts are faithfully recorderd by the awed and repulsed Polidori. Paul West's literary and historical invention of the obscure Italian doctor produces a carnal, extravangant story of Gothic depravity, of poetic genius and the sometimes diabolical personality behind it.