A comprehensive attempt to capture the spirit both of Wainewright, and of the stormy age in which he lived.
Wainewright was an ingenious and unscrupulous criminal. In 1828 he inherited the handsome family home, and successive legacies allowed him to maintain a flamboyant lifestyle. But within the space of a few years, three of his relatives died in suspicious circumstances.
Eventually arrested and tried for forgery - the murders were never proved - Thomas Griffiths Wainewright was transported for life to the barbarous penal colonies of Tasmania. Yet he had lived at the heart of the Romantic world. A painter and a writer, he exhibited at the Royal Academy, painted Byron's portrait and wrote art criticism fo the London Magazine. He was good friends with Henry Fuseli, William Blake and Charles Lamb, and knew John Clare, William Hazlitt, Thomas de Quincey and John Keats. He was famously amiable, kind, and good-hearted - silver tongued, and a tremendous dandy.