h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice entry. I picked up a copy of 'Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula' by Christopher Frayling at a charity shop the other day; Polidori's story is included, alongside Byron's fragment and several other interesting works. Quite a bargain for £2.

The most interesting part of the story is, in my opinion, one third of the way through, in the paragraph beginning, "Having left Rome, Aubrey directed his steps towards Greece". The main character looks at the ancient monuments in Athens and the narrator says:

"ashamed of chronicling the deeds of freemen only before slaves, [the monuments] had hidden themselves beneath the sheltering soil..."

This line is quite revealing of the political opinions of Polidori, and interesting when Byron - as an influence and a potential audience - is considered. Byron went to Greece in 1823 to fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and is still a national hero there.

The bit set in the woods on the following few pages is probably the scariest bit of the story. I liked that too, but won't spoil it here