Richard Byron, 12th Baron Byron to the title of 12th Baron Byron in 1983 upon the death of his fifth cousin Rupert Frederick George Byron, 11th Baron Byron, in Australia. Lord Byron died on 15 June 1989 at age 89, whereupon his surviving son Robert Byron became the 13th Baron. Richard Byron, 12th Baron Byron Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Geoffrey Gordon Byron, 12th Baron Byron DSO (3 November 1899 – 15 June 1989) was a British nobleman, peer, politician, and army officer. He was a descendant of a cousin of Romantic poet and writer, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. Byron was the son of Col. Richard
Lord Byron in England.) He journeyed through Belgium and continued up the Rhine river. In the summer of 1816 he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, the young, brilliant and handsome John William Polidori. There Byron befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's future wife Mary Godwin. He was also joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London. Several times Byron went to see Germaine de Staël and her Coppet group, which turned out to be a valid intellectual and emotional support to Byron at the time.