Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery
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Robert Sherard
Robert Harborough Sherard Kennedy was born in London on 3 December 1861, the fourth child of the Reverend Bennet Sherard Calcraft Kennedy. His father was the illegitimate son of the sixth and last Earl of Harborough and his mother, Jane Stanley Wordsworth, was the granddaughter of the poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Robert was educated at Queen Elizabeth College, Guernsey, at New College, Oxford, and at the University of Bonn, but he left both Oxford and Bonn without securing a degree. In 1880, having quarrelled with his father and lost his expected inheritance, he abandoned his ‘Kennedy’ surname.
In the early 1880s, Robert Sherard settled in Paris and set about earning his living as an author and journalist. He cultivated the acquaintance of a number of the leading literary figures of the day, including Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Alphone Daudet and Oscar Wilde. He published thirty-three books during his lifetime, including a collection of poetry, Whispers (1884), novels, biographies, social studies (notably The White Slaves of England, 1897), and five books inspired by his friendship with Oscar Wilde: Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship, 1902; The Life of Oscar Wilde, 1906; The Real Oscar Wilde, 1912; Oscar Wilde Twice Defended, 1934; and Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris and Oscar Wilde, 1936.
He was three times married and lived much of his life in France, where he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. He died in England, in Ealing, on 30 January 1943.
In 1960, in Oscar Wilde and His World, Vyvyan Holland, Wilde’s younger son, gave this assessment of Robert Sherard: ‘When they first met . . . they felt they had nothing in common and disliked each other intently; but they gradually got together and became life-long friends. Sherard wrote the first three biographical studies of Wilde after his death . . . On these three books are based all the other biographies of Wilde, except the so-called biography by Frank Harris, which is nothing else but the glorification of Frank Harris. Sherard got a great deal of his material from Lady Wilde when she was a very old lady and was inclined to let her imagination run away with her, particularly where the family history was concerned; and Sherard, a born journalist, was much more attracted by the interest of a story than by its accuracy, a failing which we can see running through all his books. But where his actual contact with Wilde is concerned, he is quite reliable.’
Gyles Brandreth
Gyles Brandreth was born on 8 March 1948 in Germany, where his father, Charles Brandreth, was serving as a legal officer with the Allied Control Commission and counted among his colleagues H. Montgomery Hyde, who published the first full account of the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1948. In 1974, Gyles Brandreth produced The Trials of Oscar Wilde (with Tom Baker as Wilde) at the Oxford Theatre Festival and, in 2000, edited the transcripts of the trials for an audio production featuring Martin Jarvis.
Gyles Brandreth was educated at the Lycée Français de Londres, at Betteshanger School in Kent, and at Bedales in Hampshire, where the school’s founder, J. H. Badley (1865–1967), provided him with a series of vivid personal accounts of Oscar Wilde’s conversational style. Badley was a friend of the Wildes, and their son Cyril was a pupil at Bedales at the time of Oscar’s arrest. Gyles Brandreth went on (like Robert Sherard) to New College, Oxford (where he was a scholar, President of the Union and editor of the university magazine), and then (again like Sherard) embarked on a career as an author and journalist. His first book was a study of prison reform (Created in Captivity, 1972); his first biography was a portrait of the Victorian music-hall star, Dan Leno (The Funniest Man on Earth, 1974). More recently he has published a biography of Sir John Gielgud, an acclaimed diary of his years as an MP and government whip (Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries 1990–97) and two best-selling royal biographies: Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage and Charles & Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair. In 2010 John Murray (publishers of Arthur Conan Doyle) published Gyles Brandreth’s diaries covering the years 1959 to 2000 under the title Something Sensational to Read in the Train – a phrase borrowed from The Importance of Being Earnest.
Robert Sherard’s forebears included William Wordsworth. Gyles Brandreth’s include a less eminent poet, George R. Sims (1847–1922), who wrote the ballads ‘Billy’s dead and gone to glory’ and ‘Christmas Day in the workhouse’, and was the first journalist to claim to know the true identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’. Sims, a kinsman of the Empress Eugénie and an acquaintance of both Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, was probably the first ‘celebrity columnist’ and well known in his day for his endorsement of an ‘infallible cure for baldness’ known as ‘Tatcho, The Geo R Sims Hair Restorer’.
As an actor Gyles Brandreth has appeared in pantomime and Shakespeare, and, most recently, as Lady Bracknell in a musical adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest. As a broadcaster, he has presented numerous series for BBC Radio 4, including A Rhyme in Time, Sound Advice, Wordaholics and Whispers – coincidentally the title of Robert Sherard’s first collection of poetry. He has featured on Desert Island Discs and is now best known as a regular on Just a Minute (Radio 4) and a reporter on The One Show (BBC 1). He is a regular on the Channel 4 word game Countdown, and his television appearances have ranged from being the guest host of Have I Got News for You to being the subject of This Is Your Life. With Hinge & Bracket he scripted the TV series Dear Ladies; with Julian Slade he wrote a play about A. A. Milne (featuring the young Aled Jones as Christopher Robin); and, with Susannah Pearse, he has recently written a play about Lewis Carroll and the actress Isa Bowman. Gyles Brandreth is married to the writer and publisher Michèle Brown, and they have three children – a barrister, a writer and an environmental economist.
Oscar Wilde died in a small, first-floor room at L’Hôtel d’Alsace, 13 rue des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, at approximately 1.45 p.m. on 30 November 1900. Exactly one hundred years later, at the same time, on the same date, in the same room, Gyles and Michèle Brandreth were among a small group who gathered to mark the centenary of his passing and to honour a most remarkable man, whose greatest play, according to Frank Harris, was his own life: ‘a five-act tragedy with Greek implications, and he was its most ardent spectator’. In 2010, Gyles Brandreth unveiled the plaque commemorating the first meeting of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle at the Langham Hotel, London.
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For further historical information and for details of the other titles in the series, for reviews, interviews and material of particular interest to reading groups, etc., see:
www.oscarwildemurdermysteries.com
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