Group launches £360,000 fund to re-site 1880 statue isolated on UK capital's roundabout

The face of the scandal-ridden, best-selling celebrity poet—who died 200 years ago, and had a great influence on 19th-century artists and composers—was better known in his era than that of anyone save Napoloen Bonaparte

JMW Turner, Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault were among the artists inspired by the much-portrayed poet whose concern for Venice and the Parthenon Marbles has a resonance 200 years after his death

The poet's biographer Fiona MacCarthy placed the Romantic Regency poet in the context of 20th-century film stardom