Some interiors

I admit that I do get bored very quickly wandering through historic houses looking at furniture, paintings, knickknacks, furniture, paintings, knickknacks. And much of what you see in Newstead today wasn't there during Byron's time; Thomas Wildman, who had been at Harrow with Byron and bought Newstead from him in 1818, did extensive restorations.

I did enjoy the exhibit on Ada Lovelace—mathematician, computing pioneer, and Byron's daughter—in the library. Ada never knew her father; her parents separated when she was only a month old. Although her mother loathed her father (probably with good reason) Ada doesn't seem to have had negative feelings about him. She named her son Byron, and was buried next to her father in the Byron family vault. And though her mother was a less than ideal parent—in letters, she referred to her daughter as “it”—she did encourage her interest in mathematics as a way of avoiding the insanity she believed Ada might have inherited from her father.