“... work of his middle years. The last third of his own life was largely given to this biography of Wilde, which was in some ways a very different sort of undertaking. There were surviving acquaintances of Joyce, but nobody who knew Wilde is available for questioning; the material, though copious, must be sought in ...”

“... volume, a blacklist of nearly three thousand names. ‘A man’s first duty is to his tailor,’ Oscar Wilde (another patron) quipped, but obviously not when it came to paying. Winston Churchill was a regular customer, even having his suits cleaned and pressed at Poole’s, until an overzealous clerk sent a letter to Number 10 demanding that he settle ...”

“... wish to identify themselves with their subjects. I have something in common with Joyce, and with Wilde, is the modest assumption of Richard Ellmann. Max was a bit like me, implies Cecil. That brings them, and us, all the closer to the subject. It can also lead to misunderstanding. Oddly enough, as Cecil’s admirable biography shows, both he and Max ...”

“... illustrated, sometimes with pictures that aren’t actually discussed (by Hopkins, Poe and Oscar Wilde), apparently effortless, occasional, these pieces are freighted with the chronic preoccupations evident since the beginning of this intelligent writer’s long career. They are not the innocent reports they seem to be. Witness Updike’s comment ...”

“... of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.’ It is safe to assume that the Oscar Wilde of ‘The Decay of Lying’ would feel far more at home in the America of William Jefferson Clinton than in that of its most esteemed founding father. For whatever else may be accused of falling into decay these days, public mendacity has surely ...”

“... a flood. Caught cavorting naked with Bosie on a lawn in Goring and challenged by a passing vicar, Oscar Wilde stuck out his hip and announced: ‘What you see is pure Greek.’ One obvious channel between art and life was provided by the popular statues humaines, the professional models – ‘La Milo’, ‘The Seldoms’ – who stripped down in public ...”

“... ludicrously morbid suicide-pact. Her adaptation was full of paradoxical epigrams in the manner of Oscar Wilde, with five acts, a Duke and a Duchess among the leading parts and a scene set in a conservatory during a ball. This reflects her happiest period, for which she is most often remembered – as an unconventional but respectable literary hostess ...”

“... his draughtsmanship. William Rothenstein recalls Whistler talking to him contemptuously of Oscar Wilde’s house in Tite Street and doing him a little drawing of it, to illustrate the monotony of such a terrace house. ‘I noticed then,’ says Rothenstein, ‘how childishly Whistler drew when drawing out of his head.’ One might think there was ...”

“... There’s​ a joke, attributed to Oscar Wilde, that the most frightening sentence in the English language is: ‘I had a very interesting dream last night.’ If Wilde did say that, it’s a safe bet that he wouldn’t have liked Insomniac Dreams, because this short book is focused entirely on the dream-life of Vladimir Nabokov ...”

“... its closure, Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, which over its 271-year history provided a stage for Oscar Wilde, Emmeline Pankhurst, Dr Crippen, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, the Kray twins and General Pinochet, is about to reopen as a hotel called NoMad London. There will be luxury suites costing up to £2500 a night, a cocktail lounge called Common Decency ...”

“... back, and they set up a ménage à deux that is a sort of apotheosis cum parody of gay marriage as Oscar Wilde might have pictured it. They squawk, squeal, prance, hit each other, make peace, get along divinely. By this time it’s clear that the servant is the master in all kinds of senses, and not just for a day, and Bogarde is not content until he has ...”

“... for many more Irish writers than himself. Yet to be free of a convention is not to ignore it. Wilde was hardly ignorant of how to flatter a duchess or please a West End audience, but it was never easy to decide whether this was deference or parody, or whether imitation might not be the sincerest form of mockery. Like many colonial writers, ...”

“... in editing such works as the collected letters of George Moore, Max Beerbohm – above all, Oscar Wilde – and later, now for many years past, in correcting the proofs of my own books with precision and severity. The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962) constitutes an achievement altogether unusual in its field of ...”

“... publisher Henry Vizetelly, jailed for issuing Zola’s works in translation. Taking stock in 1891, Oscar Wilde complained that the Fourth Estate ‘has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by journalism … The tyranny ...”

“... between the last two categories. The Heroes section would include pieces on Tom Paine and Oscar Wilde, a passionate vindication of Noam Chomsky (‘among the few Americans of his generation to lay claim to the title of original thinker’) and a long, thoughtful portrait of Professor Shahak, the great Israeli human rights activist. There is a ...”