The most passionate lover

Biographer Fiona McCarthy sheds new light on Byron's passionate Venetian lover, Margherita Cogni, nicknamed "La Fornarina" for being the wife of a baker (conveniently endowed with money to gain her consent). The biographer says that while Cogni and Byron were making love, she would cross herself when she heard the church bells ring. The fact that she could neither read nor write pleased the poet: unlike his other lovers, Cogni couldn't send her annoying letters when he left her for someone else.