Haunted by the Talmudic injunction that a man should marry and have children, yet fearful that marriage would threaten his dedication to writing, Franz Kafka spent most of his adult life in a series of doomed "marriage-attempts". Then , right at the end, at the Baltic seaside resort of M?z in 1923, he found complete happiness with another woman, Dora Diamant. He's the perfect subject for drama because of his colourful life. When he died at the age of 36, the doctors autopsied his body and said that he had the internal organs of a 75-year-old. Respect to the man," Lee Miller says, an amused grin playing across his face "He really knew how to live life to the full!"James Rampton. He's sometimes portrayed as this dark, Gothic madman, but there was much more to Byron than that Just look at the breadth of his writing. He had this tremendous energy and passion, as well as being incredibly broad-minded He possessed this immense lust for life.

It's interesting that the term 'Byron-mania' was coined back then That shows that there's always been this mania for celebs We're arrogant if we think that we invented that obsession Celebrities have always been adored and vilified. Byron's story - incest, sodomy, divorce - would have been bingo for the tabloids in any age."There was certainly a "you couldn't make it up" quality about Byron's life. Forever searching for fresh stimuli, he lived by the code, "Sensation is our only proof that we exist - that is why we crave it.""People don't see costume drama as being sexy or funny - and this is both," Lee Miller asserts "That's down to the character of Byron. People everywhere would say, 'Oooh, that Byron, he's a bit of a one.' People's interest in fame has been the same since year dot. We are in the grounds of Wrotham Park in Hertfordshire, the sort of exquisitely photogenic English stately home that is always scene-stealing in impossibly tasteful period dramas.

Relaxing in his caravan between scenes, Lee Miller is wearing his hair in elegant curls in preparation for the dreaded floppy wig without which no BBC costume drama would be complete. So to which contemporary figures would the actor liken Byron, a man who provoked hysteria merely by walking into a room?Lee Miller, who used to be married to Hollywood star Angelina Jolie and has had the odd brush with fame himself, breaks into a slow smile before saying, "I'd hate to draw comparisons with Posh and Becks, but that kind of frenzy was going on with Byron It spread across Europe like wild-fire. Some things never change.Jonny Lee Miller, who plays Byron in a new BBC2 biopic scripted by Nick Dear, reckons that the pleasure-seeking poet had a lot in common with today's paparazzi-magnetising superstars. He rented out pairs of binoculars, so that voyeuristic guests could spy on the poets' racy activities on the other side of the lake. 'Byron' starts on 27 September on BBC2STAR-STRUCK: JONNY LEE MILLER ON PLAYING BYRONWhen the famously hedonistic Byron and Shelley were staying at Lake Geneva in the early 19th century, the proprietor of an inn across the water hatched a canny money-making scheme. Introducing the poetry, Goodwin exploits the arts of the seducer, rolling around in bed and luxuriating in her bath (when did you last see a presenter in the bath?); while, in the drama, the few women wearing clothes have plunging necklines and outsized bosoms, as its protagonist delivers such lines as: "I like a woman to talk or am left with the suspicion she is thinking." Byron's afterlife has been unusually charmed: I wonder how much longer it can last.Duncan Wu is a professor of English language and literature and a fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.