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Books

An old-school biography, a big subject, and a book as heavy as a house brick, Oscar reviewed

6 October 2018

9:00 AM

6 October 2018

9:00 AM

In the autumn of 1897, after two years in jail on a charge of ‘gross indecency’, Oscar Wilde absconded to Italy with the deplorable Lord Alfred Douglas. Sodomy, whether with man or beast, carried a sentence of servitude for life in Victorian Britain: prigs protested that Wilde had got off lightly.

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