“... Negative Space seems rather more conventional than the earlier books, from its epigraph from Oscar Wilde, to the 19-part persona poem about the Antarctic explorer Frank Wild, which just about anyone might have written, and isn’t a patch on W.S. Graham’s book Malcolm Mooney’s Land or Brodsky’s ‘A Polar Explorer’, to a standard-issue ...”

“... have? I’ll tell you what sort of wallpaper they have. They have wallpaper that would have killed Oscar Wilde more quickly. I presume he wanted to know how much money they had, because the poor have different emotions from the rich, even with their eyes closed. This is what the Tories have done to English literature. Wallpaper described is always ...”

“... in the south-east of Ireland where we lived, to perform his one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar. My uncle, who was a staunch member of Fianna Fáil, the ruling party, and a fervent member of the ruling church – he was later decorated by the Pope – bought us all tickets, and we attended, as did many others in the town, in a family ...”

“... of John Addington Symonds – two years later, thinking of Symonds in connection with the trial of Oscar Wilde, James calls them ‘fond outpourings’ – which constitute a privately printed pamphlet on love between men. ‘The exhibition is infinitely remarkable,’ James says. ‘It’s a queer place to plant the standard of duty, but he does it with ...”

“... humour. A ‘Soul’ and member of the rumbustious Crabbet Club, he once played tennis naked with Oscar Wilde. Impulsive and emotional where women were concerned, he appears to have had an insatiable sexual appetite and a string of mistresses. Though nearly all his correspondence with them has been burned, enough has survived to reveal how staggeringly ...”

“... were withheld from him and he had to ask Mussolini himself for permission to look at books by Oscar Wilde and even L’Educazione Fascista. In 1926 he wrote that he had ‘tons, cartloads, households of patience’. A year later he was still confident: ‘I am convinced ... that I won’t have to rot in prison for ever.’ But by 1930, he had become ...”

“... Christian names like new ties. The landlady in ‘Fate, Art, Love, and George’ is named from Oscar Wilde. She is Miss Bunbury and keeps old personal columns with certain appointments encircled in red. For some reason, too, Miss Bunbury refers to Dan Jacobson as ‘David’ – an odd, striking detail, which, in addition to being true, contributes to ...”

“... praising Hitler for stopping the growth of Communism. He recites a short poem he’s written about Oscar Wilde. Just before sunset a small aeroplane flies over, dragging an advertising banner. It says: ‘Havana/Madrid. Lobster Dinner. $15.99’. The conversation in Key West is still about the two US civilian aircraft shot down by Cuban MiGs, the dead ...”

“... uniquely, the spirit of the Murdoch and Maxwell media age. But he is, alas, a poor man’s Oscar Wilde, who has put his genius into his life and saved his lack of talent for his work. The Fourth Estate offers just one kind of enlightenment, and should be read by anyone who has ever been puzzled by reviewers who claim inability to stop turning ...”

“... is quietly respected, where property enjoys all its rights’. From designing for households Oscar Wilde might have visited, De Morgan began writing for the drawing-rooms in which his name could never be mentioned. His novels, composed in the lengthening shadows of Edwardian nostalgia, took their readers back to the favourite reading of their own ...”

“... that two veteran Joyceans, John Wyse Jackson of the Chelsea Press, editor of Flann O’Brien and Oscar Wilde, and the Dublin social historian Peter Costello, should have been inspired to produce a full-length biography of, so to speak, Our Founder. It is in its way a unique undertaking. Hard to think of any other father in the history of ...”

“... his sister’s fun-fur jacket. He took Deborah to hear David Bowie and Lou Reed, and read her Oscar Wilde, Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn. He showed her a ring binder containing sections labelled ‘Lyrics’ and ‘Novel’. ‘I felt privileged that he had trusted me enough to let me see the extent of his ambitions,’ she writes in her ...”

“... continued to devote both emotional and intellectual intelligence to her preparation. She supported Oscar Wilde (as did Henry Irving) while Irving’s son was following popular opinion by describing Wilde’s nemesis Lord Queensberry as ‘a brick’. Holroyd quotes her as saying that ‘language was given me to conceal ...”

“... balance between respect and satire, pleasing the general public as well as the 1890s avant-garde. Oscar Wilde put it on his wall (‘Every poet should gaze at the portrait of his queen’) and when Nicholson modestly responded to praise from Whistler by remarking that the queen was a wonderful subject, Whistler replied: ‘Her Majesty might well say the ...”

“... a league of notions that are no more than bons mots, as felicitous or as facile as the epigrams of Oscar Wilde – a playwright who was always blamed for his coups de théâtre, Camus offers instead fatalist coups de philosophe that will never abolish Wilde. Thanks to shifting official attitudes in Mexico, and to its ...”