At Oxford University in the early 1970s, James D'Arblay was a talented and good-looking young man with a reputation for unreliability. A compulsive actor and musician and a man of considerable physical charm, D'Arblay is drawn towards the romantic life and the flamboyant poetry of Lord Byron during the years the poet spent in Venice from 1816 to 1819.

Transferring his graduate research studies from cold and foggy Oxford to the glittering light of Venice, James D'Arblay soon begins to think he is Lord Byron, and embarks on a series of passionate affairs with three of the wealthiest young women in Venice – Flora, Lara and Ginevra – with disastrous consequences, while his friend from Oxford, the devoted Hobhouse, picks up the pieces."