I read this book less for Oscar (okay, I like him, reasonably), more for the general picture of the Victorian morality & sexuality, and of the murky underworld, without which the existence of Oscar et cohortes would have been very hard indeed. No disappointment here. The “secret life” of the title is of course sexual life, and the author tries to upturn every stone imaginable to find some evidence of yet another of Oscar’s sexual conquests – and if there are no stones, he’ll sure place something that looks like a stone when you’re not watching.

I love gossip and I loved this book, couldn’t wait to get back to it whenever I had a spare minute, but – and it’s a huge BUT – I felt that the author was a little bit too accepting of certain things, and just swept past them in his gallop after Oscar, maybe even covering his eyes. Wilde and his friends exploited young boys who were, most of them, poor, uneducated, and socially in much lower position. Some of them were not even adolescents, but children plain and simple. It seems that Oscar was generally decent… generally, but his beloved Bosie – what an useless, destructive parasite. I wonder if Oscar knew that the person he loved the most was planning to "seduce" his 9-year-old son. Maybe he didn’t care? After all, he and Bosie went around the Middle East to have fun with little boys, who were supplied by their more than willing fathers, right? The whole world at that time was full of well-to-do white gentlemen on an endless safari in the colonies, hunting for little girls and boys. Gide’s best sexual memory was of a night spent with a 12-year-old Egyptian boy, and the five orgasms he had. (Gide, not the boy – don't be silly, no one gives a shit about the boy.) Five! Just think about it.

So – yeah. Oscar was not exactly the martyr for the cause of LGBT rights. It is a complicated thing, because he was a victim of a political cover-up to some extent, and because the law didn’t care much for minors of any gender, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was all about “love” between older men and boys. He didn’t deserve the treatment he got – especially when you think of other horrible specimens like Bosie who were allowed to go free – but he did deserve a good smack on the head.

I love Oscar Wilde. His plays, his writings, his epigrams...the self proclaimed Lord of Language's wit dazzles and delights more than a century after his death.

So I expected to enjoy this book. I expected to be amused and entertained and maybe even enthralled by this book, but I didn't expect it to be heartbreakingly beautiful in sections. That I would sit there, staring at the page with tears in my eyes, completely overcome by the transcending power of Love.

A beautiful, surprising, and above all, moving portrait of a man who was never perfect, but always interesting. Oscar and all his loves are brought to vivid, sparkling life, with all the virtues and all their failings, and McKenna's words are almost as beautiful crafted as Oscar's own.

The Secret Life Of Oscar WildeI want to start this review by saying that I loved this book. I think it's a wonderful biography of an exceptionally talented man, written by someone who not only did his research but also infused every word with that particular sense of excitement that takes hold of both writer and reader while they're immersing themselves in something - or in this case someone - they profoundly adore. I enjoyed the excerpts taken from the letters Oscar's many lovers wrote to him immensely; Clyde Fitch really did have a way with words, and I quote his 'brown-eyed fawn' metaphor often. I also adored the way in which McKenna talked about Oscar's final years; most biographies tend to take a gloomier approach to it all, insisting that Oscar was miserable after his release from prison, from the moment he stepped foot out of his cell until the moment he died looking at that god-awful wallpaper. While McKenna doesn't for a second deny that prison took its toll on both Oscar's mental and physical health, he also insists that those last few years of his life he spent enjoying Paris and Naples and Rome were far from miserable, and that "His life on the boulevards was far from a journey through Hell, more a kind of louche Heaven". I also smile fondly whenever I remember this one bit, where McKenna tells us that after his release from prison Oscar would sometimes refer to himself as "Saint Oscar of Oxford: Poet & Martyr". It's such a little thing and yet it makes me feel closer and closer to Oscar every time I read it. I love how McKenna managed to not only re-gay Oscar, but also humanize him in such a way I haven't seen anyone else do before. There's all this talk about Oscar the aesthete and his eccentricities and excesses and his lovers and his seemingly endless stream of witticisms, and I love that, I do; but in this biography we are Also shown his more vulnerable side, that side of him that he probably didn't want anyone to see, the side of him that took a little bit of Myth away from the celebrity and gave a bit of rawness back to the man. Oscar wasn't always good; in fact a lot of the time he was questionable at best, and a bunch of other, less polite yet probably more accurate adjectives at worst. And that's good. I'm not interested in admiring someone who's sitting on a pedestal so tall I can barely look at him without breaking my neck; I like my idols real and I like them from this world, at least most of the time. Back to the biography in question, and putting all my sentimental mumbo-jumbo aside, another thing I am extremely grateful to McKenna for is the focus on Robbie Ross and his relationship with Oscar (and Constance as well); Robbie was truly the best friend Oscar ever had, and I can't help but feel a great deal of gratitude whenever I read (and re-read) some of the letters he wrote to Oscar, in which it is made clear that Robbie, for the most part, always had Oscar's best interests in mind. Robbie Ross, although also not without fault, was a very gentle, very generous, Very Forgiving man, and every time something about him popped up in the book I couldn't help but smile. On the other hand, we have Bosie, whom I have a hate-love relationship with. I like how McKenna didn't seem, like most people, to be so biased as to write him off as a petulant, selfish, good-for-nothing narcissist who ruined Oscar's life and drained him of his creativity or whatever. I mean, don't get me wrong, Bosie was definitely petulant, and selfish, and immature and narcissistic and all those things, but it's also important we understand that 1) He had a very abusive childhood, followed by years of having to live with his very abusive asshole of a father, the same father who drove Bosie's brother to suicide and promptly sent Bosie's boyfriend to prison. I mean, Bosie was by no means perfect, and a lot of the things he did are inexcusable, but let's cut him some slack perhaps? And 2) No one put a gun to Oscar's head and forced him to sue Queensberry. No one forced him to stay and ignore his friends and family when they told him to run away until everything died down. Oscar was a grown man, and thus could think for himself and make his own decisions, thank you very much. They were both terrible people and they were both good people they were both selfish and immature and both intelligent and passionate and kind. They were terrible together and miserable apart. I think we would be doing Oscar a disservice if we acted like he was just some weak-willed puppet wrapped around Golden Boy Bosie's finger.

So that's pretty much what I loved about this book. That and about a thousand things more. That being said... Jesus Christ Neil, can I call you Neil? Not everything is a metaphor for anal/oral sex. As a bisexual woman I'm all for re-gaying Wilde; fuck, re-gay every single one of my favourite writers for all I care, the more the merrier, but seriously? Maybe when Oscar says that Bosie is laying "like a Hyacinth on the sofa" and "[he] worship[s] him" he actually means that... I don't know... Bosie is laying on the sofa and Oscar is admiring how pretty he looks? I often felt like McKenna was bending over backwards to try to find a hidden sexual meaning under every layer of Oscar's identity. Neil, mate, let Oscar be romantic every now and then; sometimes it's okay to take things for what they are and seem to be and not make inhuman efforts to try to somehow link everything - and I mean Everything - back to Greek Love.

I'm pretty sure I've said all I wanted to say. Long (long long long) story short: Oscar Wilde, to quote his make-out buddy Walt Whitman, contains multitudes, and Neil McKenna does a remarkable job here reminding us of that.

What a read! The authentic flavour of the fin de siecle world - at once both thrilling and appalling - and a chance to learn some picturesque period euphemisms such as 'like a hyacinth', irrumination, pollution labiale, pedicatio, coitus inter crura (Latin is such a useful language!), to quote but a few....! Also a good summary of the Cleveland Street scandal. And at the end of it all is the inevitable inference that, whatever the mess, the English ruling classes have always closed ranks to look after their own. The only irritation of the book is the bizarre annotation, sans footnotes.

So good, a look into a genius's life and the culture of the day. A bit too graphic for me at times, but that's just me.

A bit of a slog, to be honest. I love Oscar's writing, but if this book is any indication, wouldn't have cared for him as an individual.

It suffers from two major flaws: firstly, repetition (yes, he was a habitual user of Oxonian undergraduates and renters, we've got the message) and secondly, blithe acceptance of unacceptable behaviour. I realise it's a mistake to judge by our standards, but I found Oscar's cold hearted neglect of his wife and family unforgivable. McKenna also seems to be dazzled by Oscar's 'one true love' Bosie, who was not only the most wretched, spoilt little bitch any great man wasted his time on, but strongly implied to be a paedophile (at one point he has designs on Oscar's nine year old son!) I soon became very tired of reading yet another "exquisite sonnet" by Bosie that was anything but.

The best parts of the book deal with Oscar's writing, particularly when examined from a "Uranian" perspective, and assorted gay scandals (I hadn't been aware of Francis Douglas's love affair with the Prime Minister before). The villain of the piece, "the scarlet Marquis", is feelingly invoked- how dare such a grotesque man set himself up as a guardian of public morals? But the book was such a confused, overwritten hotchpotch, smiling upon such dubious morals, it was a chore to get through and I'm thoroughly relieved to have finished it. Indeed, I'll probably have to read Oscar's oeuvre again to have my confidence in him restored.

I learned the history that I had been curious about. I found him to be an unsympathetic figure.

McKenna is trying to redress what he might be correct in seeing as our blinkered view of Wilde's sexuality and its role in his life and writing. But in doing so he has painted Wilde more as a homosexual campaigner who every now and then put something down on paper, rather than the writer, wit, poet, playwright, lover, husband, father and man that he was. In trying to expand and alter our view on Wilde, he seems to have narrowed it.


There is interesting material in here, and he certainly examines a side of Wilde's character and life that can sometimes be glossed over, but also he seems to make assumptions without evidence, and leaps of logic. He throws in the word 'definititely' or its equivalent when he has not earned it.

This is a worthwhile read, but Ellman is probably still the standard.

It is quite difficult for me to make out which parts of this biography are facts, and which are one-line historical records enlarged to full-blown scenes by McKenna's prurient pen.

I like that this biography seeks to do away with the vision that Wilde was a bisexual family man who only occasionally was attracted to men. That portrayal appears to exist only so that Wilde can keep appealing to the straight and narrow. Wilde was a man who was exclusively attracted to men, and in seeking to prove his sexuality was legitimate and provided him with what the relationship with his wife lacked, overshot it by a mile, so that every single female character in his oeuvre became an awful harpy. Men in Wilde works are, if not virtuous, fed up with the females in their lives, and forced to seek refuge in male friendships. It is a way to make homosexual relationships understandable to the general public at a time where gay pride parades were unthinkable.

McKenna's biography paints Wilde as fairly unlikable, but he, after all, tried to adjust his violently heterodox life to the confines of his time. It is not always possible to conquer such a feat in a way that makes one likable to subsequent generations.

This is a wonderful biography of Oscar Wilde and really captures his tortured commitment to his lifestyle: tortured by his love for Constance and more awfully by the marquis of Queensbury. His determined commitment to his lifestyle as recounted by McKenna demonstrates how Wilde Politicised the personal and was probably the first to blaze a gay pride trail. The book is witty and erudite and captures the tragedy that was Oscar's trial in the dock. Read it and respect this legend.

Unfortunately this biography wasn't available in my formative years ... I had to put up Montgomery Hyde droning on about the trails.

Irrefutable evidence Wilde was a lover of boys.

Thoroughly researched, well written and gripping, this account of Wilde’s sex life is full of fascinating revelations. It is astonishing that so much new information essential to our understanding of him should emerge more than a century after his death. I feel bound to devote most of this review to explaining a serious flaw, so I should first stress that it is a good book, very well worth reading.

Its most obvious weakness is being overdone in terms of the homoerotic assumptions McKenna makes about both Wilde’s friendships and his writings. When combined with his failure to supply proper footnotes, this is severely damaging to his credibility, a great shame considering the importance of his work.

Similarly unfortunate are factual errors glaring enough to shake one’s faith in his knowledge and therefore understanding of the period. For example, he says the Duke of Cambridge in 1893 was the brother of the Prince of Wales. People then would have been just as familiar with their true relationship as people now are about the present incumbents of those titles.

McKenna’s narrow sexual focus has debatably helped him to delve deep into Wilde’s psyche, but at the cost of ignoring important aspects of his emotional and intellectual life that hold no erotic interest, such as his rapport with his sons.

The flaw in both this biography and the popular sexual perception of Wilde that requires far greater attention is the idea he was an apostle for the modern gay cause. In McKenna’s view, his life was “an epic struggle for the freedom of men to love men” and the story is concluded on an upliftingly triumphant note:
“A hundred years and many monstrous martyrdoms later, Oscar’s men are outcast men no more and the love that dared not speak its name has at last found its joyful voice.” I shall try to demonstrate what nonsense this is.

The given ages of Oscar’s lovers ranged from 13 or 14 if one counts “indecent liberties” taken with Herbert Tankard or “about 14” (the testimony of a Savoy chambermaid) to 24 (but only if one accepts McKenna’s assertion that Frank Miles was one). Fitting neatly into the middle of this, we have Bosie’s word that 19 was “just Oscar’s style” when he was 40. So was he like today’s gays or was he a pederast, a lover of boys?

A vital precursor to any discussion of this is verifiable dismissal of the falsehood still widely perpetuated that there is no evidence for Oscar’s liaisons with boys. These have often centred on the age of Alphonso Conway whom McKenna admits Oscar fellated at 15 in 1894, but others have claimed may have been much older. Let me finally consign the latter claim to the dustbin. Anyone caring to look at the 1891 census will find that the only boy in England with a remotely similar name was “Alphus. Conway” living in Worthing (matches) with his widowed mother (matches) and aged 12 (proves the point). To get this in better perspective, be aware that the average Victorian boy reached puberty at 16.

More important than quibbling over exactly how young Oscar’s boys were is understanding the ethos that underlay his liaisons. Were they relationships between equals, and so socially-correct in today’s terms, or were they age-structured affairs to which the older and younger lover contributed different but complimentary things? Here we need go no further than Oscar’s applause-rousing explanation to the jury of “the love that dare not speak its name” delineating precisely the disparate contributions to mutual affection contributed by an elder and younger man. The diplomatic use of “younger man” instead of “boy” should fool no one familiar with Oscar’s incessant praise of “paiderastia” or “Greek love” or his private self-designation as “a poet in prison for loving boys.” . Even McKenna frequently admits boys were what Oscar was about, as when he calls him “the champion not just of the legitimacy – but more importantly, the superiority – of sex between men and boys”.

Any notion that Oscar might have respected the law by abstaining from boys if he had lived in today’s Britain, legally tolerant of sex between men (though still socially intolerant of the age gap always present in his liaisons), runs counter to all he said and stood for: “I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.” It was anyway every man’s duty to have “the courage” to commit “what are called sins.” Sex with boys was “like feasting with panthers. The danger was half the excitement.”

Let us now return to the claim that “Oscar’s men” are outcast no more, and how better than by examining what would happen today to Oscar himself as soon as suspicions of his sexual antics became public? The police would begin a massive trawl for “victims” which would bring in every boy who had met Oscar besides many others tempted by the financial inducements of victimhood and low burden of evidence required. His friends would soon be extradited where necessary and arrested, with Bosie and Robbie in particular headed for far worse fates than Oscar due to their firm preference for younger boys. Instead of waiting for his first trial, there would be an immediate public outcry against celebrity perverts and his plays and books would disappear from theatres and shops overnight. Instead of claiming him as their patron saint or even just standing up for him, the gay community would be at the forefront of the outrage, desperately anxious to repudiate him as one of them and furious with him for giving homosexuality a bad name. Far from being applauded, his speech at his trial defending misunderstood love would be fiercely denounced by all for its callous indifference to the “suffering” of his paramours, sorry, victims, as indeed would any dissenting or sympathetic voice.

In the unlikely event that Oscar survived the much longer prison sentence he would be given today, he would spend the rest of his life on the sex offenders’ register, while a SOPO would ensure he couldn’t move to a gentler land and alleviate his misery by having some fun with French and Italian boys. Instead he would eke out his last years hiding in some British backwater and living in daily terror of being found and murdered by a virtue-loving vigilante. Meanwhile society would never have stopped smugly congratulating itself on a handling of Oscar that showed how much more enlightened it was than those barbaric Victorians.

“The love that dare not speak its name” was the love between men and adolescent boys and has nothing to do with today’s gays. Despite Wilde’s martyrdom and all he did to remind the world of its noble past, it is spoken of today in ever more terrified whispers.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander’s Choice, an Eton boy’s love story, https://www.amazon.com/dp/191457107X