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Lola was neither Spanish nor a dancer, but she managed to convince the world she was both. Born in Ireland in 1821 as Elizabeth Gilbert, she reinvented herself as a Spanish dancer and performed around the world, seducing many influential men along the way, including Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Lola was one of the first women to cultivate celebrity as a career; she created public dramas, practised sexual liberation, held political power and became notorious on a global scale.