Tetchy, fat, paralytic. But the great 18th century composer’s poison was the lead in his wine, says historian It wasn’t the English climate or even the diet that made the composer George Frideric Handel so fat and so cross: it was the lead in his wine that poisoned him until his health was so disastrously affected he could neither conduct, play nor see to compose.

David Hunter, a music historian who has been studying contemporary accounts of the great composer and presents his most recent research in an exhibition opening in London next week, is convinced lead poisoning is the mystery factor overlooked in puzzling accounts of Handel’s health and temper - and of many others who drank copiously in Georgian England.

Handel’s gluttony, caricatured in a famous image by his one-time friend Joseph Goupy — showing the composer as “the Charming Brute” seated on a wine barrel playing an organ festooned with food — could have been linked to his genes, Hunter believes.

The gluttony caused Handel to wash his food down with quantities of wine, which by the time it reached his glass might have been adulterated three times over with lead.

The new exhibition includes the score of the composer’s last work, Jephtha, with a poignant note in German, dated February 1751, recording that Handel could not go on because his left eye was too weak. Handel’s sight recovered enough to complete the piece.

The exhibition at his home of 36 years is one of many events marking the 250th anniversary of his death.

But Handel Reveal’d, the Handel House exhibition, in Mayfair, London, shows the musician warts and all, including the temper that reputedly led him to threaten to drop a soprano from a high window. A caricature highlights a spectacular piece of meanness — an artist, invited to dinner, was told there was only plain fare, but then spied Handel leaving the table to scoff delicacies in a back room.

He admits there can be no final proof. “He is buried in Westminster Abbey ... I can’t see the dean and chapter and the monarch allowing us to start a fashion for digging people up to check their bones, but to me all the evidence stacks up.”