Shortly before Easter in 1895, two English boys, aged 8 and 9, were wrenched from the security of a happy family life in Victorian London and sent abroad like fugitive criminals to forget their past, their parenthood and even their names. The crime from which they fled was that of being born the sons of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, the most famous and quite suddenly the most notorious literary figure of his day.
The shame which the innocent boys were taught to feel by presumably well-meaning friends and relatives never quite wore off. The elder son Cyril got himself...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
