Tim Bouverie

Far from ideal

Contrary to popular opinion, Oscar Wilde was deeply attached to his family, says Emer O’Sullivan — and a mantra of his mother’s inspired his most famous play

issue 11 June 2016

There were few subjects which escaped Oscar Wilde’s barbed wit: dentists, cynics, Americans, literary critics, democracy, the working classes, the middle classes, the upper classes and Bernard Shaw were all prey for his cutting paradoxes. Family, however, got off lightly. Not for Wilde the sinister or cruel depictions of relations which permeate the novels of Evelyn Waugh and find their dysfunctional climax in Brideshead.

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