Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas

by Douglas Murray

There is a vogue these days for biographies of minor, peripheral characters who lived on the margins of literary greatness: Tennyson's wife, for instance, or Dickens' mistress.

This new biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensbury and, most scandalously, the lover of Oscar Wilde, has attracted huge attention because of the age of the biographer. Douglas Murray began writing it at 17, and he is only 20 now. It is an astonishing achievement: mature, considered, fluently written and richly detailed. Bosie's youth was the epitome of the 1890s,"greenery-yallery" decadence, but unlike his lover and mentor, the brilliant, doomed Wilde, Bosie lived on until 1945, becoming increasingly religious, repentant about his past (as Wilde never was), and finally a recluse.

On one key issue, however, Murray seems seriously off-message: he argues that Bosie was a major literary figure in his own right, and that the value of his poetry has been seriously underrated. "He was a poet not just of the 90s but one who would endure the 20th century and produce a poem that would echo as a work of searing faith and a testament to spiritual renewal." Er ... no. The poem Murray alludes to is "In Excelsis", Bosie's riposte to Wilde's work "De Profundis".

But it is tiresomely self-absorbed, antiquated, and unimaginative, a prolonged whinge about the lot of the misunderstood genius. Nevertheless, Bosie's story is still worth telling, even if his poetic reputation is not worth defending, and Murray tells it extremely well. --Christopher Hart

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, LGBT, Queer, Poetry, Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Douglas Kear Murray is a British neoconservative writer and commentator. He was the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion from 2007 until 2011, and is currently an associate director of the Henry Jackson Society.

Murray appears regularly in the British broadcast media, commentating on issues from a conservative standpoint, and he is often critical of Islamic fundamentalism. He writes for a number of publications, including Standpoint, the Wall Street Journal and The Spectator.

Reviews

[Lord Beardsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have this huge, weird love for horrible bastards. I don't know why. I always have. It all stems back to really liking Gargamel from The Smurfs. I think that's why I like Lord Alfred Douglas so much.

The author of this book probably likes evil villians also. And he's one himself. I'll explain.

Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas was the Golden Boy who brought down Oscar Wilde. This biography of him is very well written and researched. For starters, the author is 27 now and started writing it when he was 14 years old. He did an amazing job researching a rather obscure life and the first half of the book is incredibly engaging and gives a very fair look into Bosie as a person. He brings up some very valid points and really does express that Bosie wasn't as horrible and evil as many people think him (he's just your typical spoiled, jaded, bitch). In fact, he did heavily support Wilde for some time when he was released from prison. He also stood by him and defended him for a long period of time. I disagree with the author, however, on the point that Douglas was one of the best poets of his generation. His stuff is cringe-worthy terrible.

Bosie was less the Shakespeare of his generation and more like the Conor Oberst of his generation. Bosie was seriously more emo than Bright Eyes and his emo-poems are nearly as god-awful.

Also, as he grew older he converted to Catholicism (which reminds me of what a friend of mine once said: "when I'm old I'm either going to end up crazy or Catholic". Bosie ended up both). He also was responisible for translating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (one of the most, if not the most Anti-Semitic pieces of garbage ever written and one of the most influential books for Hitler). He was a raging bigot not to mention a pederast. When he was still a practicing homosexual (as opposed to a closeted one) his favorite thing was to seduce schoolboys. He was basically an all around horrible person.

Speaking of all-around horrible people...Douglas Murray (the author) is an enthusiastic Neo-Conservative. He is anti-multi-culturalism and if you look him up on Youtube you'll be appaled at some of the things he espouses.

It sounds like he and Douglas had a lot in common.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boise, Alfred Douglas, was a factor in the fall and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. Douglas Murray’s book attempts to rescue Douglas from being known just for one thing – as Wilde’s boy toy – as well to restore Boise’s reputation as a poet.

Sadly, there is something off about the book.

Murray does have a point in the whole Wilde/Boise affair. At that point, Boise was young and spoiled. He didn’t hold a gun to Wilde’s head, and Wilde was the married man and father.

Yet this point aside Murray does not really succeed in what he sets out to do.

Part of the problem is the sense of vacuum. The book is about Boise, and mostly Boise there really isn’t much sense of the time he lived in or the people who formed part of his story. While background is given about his parents, this is one of the few times that such detail is given. For instance, when Boise’s elder brother’s wife dies it only gets a mention when his brother remarried in the next sentence. When talking about the animosity between Ross and Douglas, Murray chalks it up to simple jealous on the part of Ross, an argument that is hard to fully buy because Murray doesn’t really give any sense of the relationship between Ross and Wilde, but to say they slept together at least once. He also implies that Wilde engaged in homosexual behavior because Wilde and his wife stopped having intercourse as a form of birth control. While such conclusions might be true to present them with little to no support makes them dangerously simplistic.

Another problem is the double standard and Boise as the only honest person. When writing a biography about someone who has been the target of potshots, there is always the danger of making the subject a sinned against saint. While Murray doesn’t go this far, he does come too close. This is due to two things. The first is that he makes it appear that Boise was the only friend to stand by Wilde upon release from prison. He does this, in part, by condemning Constance Wilde for refusing to give her husband an allowance unless he broke it off with Boise. Basically, we are led to be, she is being judgmental and unfair. But this is put forward in a vacuum (Wilde’s fall in this book seems to have had limited impact on his family), and that is part of the problem. The second is the account of Douglas’ translating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into English. While it is true that Anti-Semitism was viewed differently, why does this only get a very brief paragraph? Why should we avoid judging him when we are encouraged to judge Constance and others who condemn homosexuality by today’s standards?

In fact, this almost cynical and dismissive view of women is consistent. Douglas’ wife is no more than a pawn of her father. Again, there is a vacuum in the detail.

And we are to view Wilde’s affair with Boise differently than we are to view Boise’s affair with a young man. This episode in the biography occurs when Boise is older and has converted Catholicism – so why a homosexual affair, Murray doesn’t really say.

The other main thrust of the book is that Boise is an overlooked poet, who might have been greater than Wilde in some cases. He really doesn’t prove this, and the poetry that he does quote, is rather mediocre. The focus on poetry accounts for the vacuum that weakens the book.

[Rohase Piercy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating read, an in-depth study of the life and character of Lord Alfred Douglas, always remembered as Oscar Wilde's lover and often judged harshly for escaping to the continent when Wilde was tried and convicted of gross indecency back in the 1890s.
It's amazing to think that this biography was first written back in 2000 when the Douglas Murray was still an undergraduate - whilst I'm sure that much revision went into this 2020 edition, I'm still in awe of the meticulous research conducted by so young an author, and of his insight into the complexity of life in general, and Lord Alfred Douglas' life in particular.
Oscar Wilde died in 1900 - Bosie lived on until 1945, his life and experience covering a remarkable period of changes, historical, political and social. Yes, he was neurotic, fractious and argumentative (his long list of lawsuits against people he claimed to have libelled him in some way or other, including his rival for Wilde's affections Robert Ross, exhibit a most unpleasant paranoia); but he was also sensitive, introspective, generous and kind, a willing mentor to the young, a devout Catholic convert, and a major poet whose mastery of the sonnet form is regarded by many as second only to Shakespeare.
Bosie renounced his homosexual lifestyle very soon after Wilde's death, and his subsequent marriage to Olive Custance produced one son, Raymond, who unfortunately ended his days in an asylum. There is no doubt that he genuinely loved his wife - although separated after a number of years, they remained close - and towards the end of his life, Bosie candidly stated his opinion that most people are basically bisexual.
By the end he had made peace with those of his enemies still living, forgiven those who had predeceased him, written some of the most beautiful sonnets in the English language, and published (in addition to his autobiography) a candid re-evaluation of his life and character entitled 'Without Apology' in which he says:
"All one is constrained to do ... is to say: 'This is what I did, and this is why I did it.' Life lands one in a certain position (whether by one's own faults, or merely by fatality or the fault of others, really matters very little); and finding oneself in that position, one acts according to one's temperament, one's convictions and one's courage or lack of it. On the whole, I think that it is a mistake to allow the opinion of the world to influence one ... One can act only according to one's lights, and if one is in good faith, one may hope that in the long run justification will result, even if not in this world or in one's own lifetime.'
That is the epitaph of a man who has made peace with himself at the end of a long and eventful life - and really, what more can any of us wish for?

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Edited to read better but no opinions altered, October 2024).

I am giving this book one star because someone badly needs to demolish the idea that Mr. Murray's book is a 'biography' in any sense of the word. Although it is a relief that it does not include every laundry list and post card sent that Bosie left behind, it is unacceptable for Mr. Murray to be selective to the point of dishonesty in what he does include. This is not a biography because far too much of Bosie's life is glossed over or ignored. This makes it a dishonest portrait of Bosie as a person and of his life.

The author claims his main interest is to rehabilitate Douglas as a 'poet' because he thinks Bosie was a more than good poet, he thinks Bosie was, indeed still is, a significant poet. Mr. Murray doesn't realise that to be recognised as a 'good' never mind a significant poet requires more than writing some pastiche sonnets in the style of Petrarch or Shakespeare. An artist must have a voice and that voice must emerge from his time. If I might turn from poetry to painting to explain, John Singer Seargent was seen in his lifetime as the equal of, and is still compared today to, Rembrandt, van Dyke or Velasquez. But he did not paint like Rembrandt, van Dyke or Velasquez. He absorbed the lessons and techniques of the past but he created something new and wonderful. Bosie had a tremendous facility in using, for example, the sonnet form, but brought nothing new or interesting to it.

But most importantly you must look at a poet's, or any artists' work, in its entirety. Does the author of the following strike anyone as a good or notable poet?:

The leprous spawn of scattered Israel
Spreads its contagion in your English blood;
Teeming corruption rises like a flood
Whose fountain swelters in a womb of hell.
Your Jew-kept politicians buy and sell
In markets redolent of Jewish mud,
And while the ‘Learned Elders’ chew the cud
Of liquidation’s fruits, they weave their spell.

That is an excerpt from what Douglas thought of as his great justification 'In Excelcis'. The title meaning 'From the Height' referenced his six months in prison for libel and is meant as deliberate reposte to Oscar Wilde's De Profundis 'From the Depths '. But to understand just how far Bosie's 'poetry' fails to stand up you need to compare it not to De Prfundis but Wilde's 'Ballad of Reading Gaol'.

'In Excellcis' is also full of two of the themes Douglas spent a large part of his later life expounding, virulent anti-Semitic propaganda and what a hideous monster Oscar Wilde was, how dangerous homosexuality was and how it needed to be suppressed in every way possible. It is quite extraordinary that a biographer about man who produced so much hate filled tripe about gay men should receive a Lambda award as the best gay biography published in that year particularly when it doesn't even give attention to either Bosie's pro 'gay' remarks at the time of Wilde's trial (I've always had my doubts about the Lambda awards. I can't help wondering what competition there was for the biography award when this awful book won. I really don't think the judges (and who are they) could have read either this biography or anything else about Douglas) with any degree of attention.

Mr. Murray's simply ignores most of Douglas's life post Wilde - or at least he covers it by leaving out most of the sordid and unflattering details - and providing masses of excuses - though again excuses for what is left very vague. he finds it extraordinary that Douglas was refused a pension from the Royal Literary Fund - why? - what had Douglas written worthy of praise? Having had the odd blow job from a genius and played a significant role in the man's self implosion is hardly reason to be given a pension. He wasn't a poet that had any literary reputation or standing. That wasn't prejudice, it was a reflection that his work was a pastiche of older forms. Some of his early poems were pleasant to read but hardly significant. The RLF wasn't there to help out idiotic younger sons of minor lords who were spendthrifts.

Douglas deserves a proper biography but not this tosch whose only recommendation was the author's youth when he wrote it and old school tie connections which made its publication possible.

That it is still in print and has now been repackaged to appeal to the gay market is even more of a disgrace. I owned a copy at one time but gave it to charity because I can't throw books, even bad ones, in the rubbish bin but that is the best place for it.

[Ajša P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the three books on Wilde-related subjects that my poetry professor lent me to read over the summer, and I figured I'd read this one first because I thought its subject matter will frustrate me most. Turns out I was right, but I also learnt many new things and gained a new insight on the lives of all the people involved in that famous late eighteen nineties scandal.

I think I gained a better understanding of how Lord Alfred's mind worked, how his thought process was during the 1895 trials, and what led him to act in the way he did in the early decades of the twentieth century. I think Murray was incredibly succinct and efficient in describing what exactly went wrong with the Wilde lawsuit and how those trials affected everyone involved for decades to come. Wilde was of course had his entire life ruined, but Douglas also didn't escape unscathed. His paranoia that he held in later life was definitely a consequence of people's attitudes towards him in the years after the trial and it definitely motivated all the times he went to court after Wilde's death. I was surprised to learn that Bosie had beef with Winston Churchill himself, among many, MANY others. By the end of the biography, I couldn't help but to feel just a little sorry for Bosie, since he did, in many ways, become just like his father that he despised so strongly and openly in his youth. His attacks on the people he knew were vicious, he sometimes straight up used the same techniques as his father, which is almost scary. It brings me some peace of mind that he seemed to have gained just a little clarity over his own behavior by the end of his life though.

Murray tried to make a case for Bosie's poetry, which in my opinion didn't succeed. I won't hold that against him though, since poetry is very subjective and if he wants to make a case for a bunch of poems I find rather mediocre, let him do so. My problems with this biography are mostly tied to the treatment of Robbie Ross. Even as a self-proclaimed member of the so-called Ross camp, I can recognize that nobody in this situation was the clear-cut "good guy", but I can't help but to think that Bosie is sometimes a bit unfairly presented as a victim, or the only "good guy" in a situation. I still can't get over Murray arguing that Bosie was the only person who made an effort to help Wilde in prison. I'm sorry but Robbie didn't tirelessly campaign for Wilde to be moved into a prison where he'd have the privilege of writing and Robert Sherard, as misguided as his attempts to redeem Wilde in his later years were, didn't challenge the Marquis of Queensberry to a DUEL to defend his honor while Bosie was chilling on Capri and actively making the situation worse with his articles that were supposed to help. Murray is fair enough to recognize that most of Bosie's tragedy was of his own making, but he definitely leans against Ross. I think this is a bit unfounded, since in my opinion, Ross gave Bosie more than enough chances to try to redeem himself, but what could he do if Bosie simply refused to cooperate?

All in all, I think this biography needed to be written. It's easy to just think of Bosie as the asshole that ruined Wilde's life and went full villain after his lover's death, but I think it's also valuable to understand some circumstances that brought him there, whether they ran in the family (like his temperament) or were of his own making. It's a valuable source and I'm glad I read it.

[Philip Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

We usually have come to know Lord Alfred Douglas in the context of being the spoiled, often vicious, self-centered young beauty who was the great love of Oscar Wilde. But here, thankfully, Douglas Murray shows us the man who learned hard lessons from that time, who was often pilloried wrongly and misunderstood. His biography is invaluable in bringing Douglas's poetry to the critical level that shows their resonance and worth in the long line of poetic history, and here places them once again for reconsideration and deep reading. Murray is completely even on presenting the good and the bad sides of Douglas, but his incisive research provides a overall life of a man who was unsettled by his time, and too often unaware of his gifts. Murray too lets us know the very hard life and lessons learned that Douglas had to suffer -- much of his life was involved in litigious court battles, constantly fighting to tell his side of a story much maligned and assumed by those who had no real idea or compassion for neutrality and fairness. We come away from it, knowing Douglas as at last a man who paid his dues, suffered deeply -- he too was imprisoned, and experienced hard labor, and the result of which, like Wilde's almost destroyed his desire to write. But he found deeper creative tethers to hold fast to, and with a return to the Catholic faith, found ways in which to accommodate and and be fully honest with his life and its repercussions. Beautifully written, and consummate in its research, it gives us a portrait of Douglas that is complex, and human. One comes away from it with a deeper understanding not only of Douglas, but of Wilde and the entire period in which both of them loved each other, no matter how harsh the resultant lessons learned.

[David Corvine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Corrects many of the lies and propaganda from the Ross camp.

[Mary Pagones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars primarily for chronicling Douglas' far lesser-known life post-Wilde, an an important corrective to the romanticized image of the relationship of the two men after Wilde's release from prison.

I can't improve upon a review I saw of this book from Twitter, which is basically that even as a Douglas apologist, Murray can't conceal what an absolute shite his subject was in life--like his father, Douglas used the court system to hound those whom he hated, including dear Robbie Ross, who did everything he could to rehabilitate and preserve Oscar Wilde's reputation. Douglas converted to Catholicism, repudiated Wilde, was an absent father like his own (although that was partially because he was forcibly separated from his son as unfit), and libeled William Churchill as a war profiteer. Oh, and he was also antisemitic. He threw away just about every opportunity to do something useful, including the editorship of several literary magazines, and pretty much the only good things Douglas did was that he eventually softened in his position to Wilde and wrote a halfway decent poem, "Two Loves," as a young man.

Unfortunately, Douglas also wrote a great deal of forgettable verse, and Murray spends far too much time trying to convince the reader it's significant, even though it would never have been given any regard, were it not for the sexual history of the author. The poem written about his brother's untimely death is moving because of the context. But as a poet of significance Douglas falls short--he disdained modernism and never became a vibrant part of the changes in poetic culture, which would have made him interesting beyond his personal biography.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustive biography of the infamous younger lover of Oscar Wilde. The book strives to act as a corrective to the well-known narrative that Bosie was a petulant and faithless lover whose attentions brought Wilde to ruin - in this it is successful, with the relationship being painted in far more shades of grey than usual; the account of their final days together in Naples, ended because their respective funders would not agree to them living together, is very sad and moving. Secondly, the book attempts to rescue Douglas' reputation as a poet - his sonnets were once considered on a par with Shakespeare; the Wilde affair has rather overshadowed his poetry, and it does feel unfair, given how highly the poetry was considered in his life (it is mostly out of print now). The book does best as an account of a deeply flawed man, often responding to circumstances unwisely, who eventually found a home in the Catholic faith and a way of coming to terms with his past.

It's not that great as a portrait of Douglas' times, and there's a sense that the author doesn't really give credit to Douglas' class position - his inherited wealth and title entirely shaped his ability to go through life without ever having to earn a living, although that bit him in the end, given he ended up flat broke. But one does come away thinking rather fondly of the older Douglas, and intrigued to read his poetry.

It's fascinating to read Bosie as Murray's first book, written in his late teens. His writing career has taken him away from being a biographer, and the detail and affection for his subject here makes one consider that a loss to the craft.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Knowing that the author was an undergraduate when he wrote the book makes this a remarkable achievement. The problem is that he has not succeeded, for me at least, in making his case that Lord Alfred Douglas is interesting enough, on his own, to justify an entire book. There are two sides to every story, and I'd wondered if there was more to Douglas than there seemed. It was interesting to have the various bits and pieces of his later life that turn up in biographies of Oscar Wilde fleshed out (his marriage, his Catholic conversion) and rather charming to read about his late-life friendships with George Bernard Shaw and Marie Stopes. I cannot share the author's high opinion of Douglas's poetry, and my opinion hasn't been changed significantly.

[Bilqees (thebellekeys) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Murray is an insufferable bigot and it often comes through in his writing here, but beyond that, this was a great biography about a figure that lives on the periphery of English history but who was once unironically considered one of the nation's greatest sonnet-writers since Shakespeare.

You go in with your preconceptions about Wilde and Queensbury and come out with a lot of sympathy and pity for a chaotic evil twink (many such cases) who, in many ways, perfectly embodied the transition from the aristocratic decadence of the fin-de-siècle to the proletarian anxieties of the interwar period.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting character, though hard to keep track of the text's plethora of personalities and their discretions.

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best biography of Bosie I’ve read so far…which, considering I’ve only read one other, doesn’t say much, but I have read several books on Wilde that touch considerably on Bosie and which misrepresent him. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I felt that the author has given Bosie the best treatment I’ve read in print, one that is honest, just, and compassionate, while acknowledging his faults and not seeking to whitewash him for the bad deeds he committed. This is also I think the most recent Wildean book I’ve read thus far, and perhaps because of that, there was a considerable amount of new information that I didn’t know about, as well as acknowledgement of previous biographies of Bosie, one of which I read, the other which I have a library copy of at the moment. Some of the new information had to do with Bosie’s friendships in his older age with fans of his poetry, and there were diary entries transcribed of friends of his that I hadn’t read before. Also, I think some things that in older biographies that wouldn’t be described bald-facedly were printed here, so it was illuminating in the sense of being straightforward and not dissimulative. I liked the way Murray dispensed with the more boring and un-noteworthy bits of Bosie’s life quickly to move onto the fascinating in greater detail—like the way he described very quickly Bosie’s two years of owning a racing stable. I also loved the way Murray touched on Bosie’s poetry and writing, quoting quite a lot of it and dealing with it seriously, because in Montgomery Hyde’s biography of Bosie, it was very much facts-based and chronological, not studying his work or art whatsoever.

Honestly, since I enjoyed this book so much, I don’t have much more to say. I guess there was one slight misgiving I had; sometimes, while reading this, it seemed the author has a bit of a prejudice against homosexuality? There are a few lines where he seems to agree with Bosie renouncing it in later life and pronouncing it a sin, but that may just be the way some of the passages were phrased, which showed Bosie’s view but not the author’s view. It was so minor, and barely showed up (and there were parts that dealt with homosexuality which weren’t in any way touched with bigotedness whatsoever), that it doesn’t change the way I view this book, but I thought I should mention it in case it is relevant. I also think it’s possible (though this is simply speculation) that Murray is a Christian of a sort himself, judging from the way he sometimes wrote of Bosie’s Catholicism. Not a big deal, but I thought I’d say something about it, since it was a thought I had while reading. I was surprised to see that Murray’s author profile says he’s a neoconservative? Not sure what to think about it, but, of course, it doesn’t change my enjoyment and love of this book.

Also, Jesus Christ, the blurb on Goodreads for this book is just horrible. Please ignore it, and read the book yourself instead of taking for granted the criticism of this book by another person. Why on Earth is the blurb for the book a criticism of the book, not the book’s actual description? That is odd to me.

Quotations:

“Douglas had a strong reason for going abroad at this time. As usual, it had to do with a boy. Max Beerbohm explained the problem in a letter to Reginald Turner: Robert Ross had stayed in Bruges with the Reverend Biscale Hale Wortham, who kept a boys’ school there and was also the brother-in-law of Ross’s tutor at King’s, Oscar Browning. Ross had known a pupil there, Philip Danney, since the lad was fourteen. Danney was now sixteen and Ross invited him to ‘stay’ with him in London. A smitten Ross communicated the boy’s presence in London to Douglas, who was still in Goring with Wilde. Douglas’s response was to rush to London, seduce the boy and take him back to Goring where, according to Oscar Browning’s summary of events, ‘On Saturday the boy slept with Douglas, on Sunday he slept with Oscar. On Monday he returned to London and slept with a woman at Douglas’ expense.’ On Tuesday Danney returned to Bruges – three days late – and when questioned by his headmaster revealed all. His father went to the police, though dropped the idea of prosecution when he realised that although Ross and Douglas would be sentenced to two years each, his own son would spend six months in prison. Wilde’s name was kept out of it, but the incident should have served as a warning of the danger that such exploits entailed.” (52)

“Invective was characteristic of Douglas’s style and manner, both in life and poetry, and he turned on all those friends who let him down in some way, often brutally. He valued loyalty, and nothing enraged him more than a friend who let him down. His public-school attitude to friendship was strengthened by his mother’s example: she had always treasured him, protected him and adored him, and in childhood, adulation had come from almost everyone. He took any betrayal by a friend as a direct attack on him, and it was many years before he learnt how to cope with this, and only then because he had to.” (63)

“The received version of events swiftly became that he had committed suicide because he expected public revelation of his alleged affair with Lord Rosebery, but there is no proof that Drumlanrig was having an affair with Roseberry, and the possibility of suicide is even less substantiated. . . . Although he did not believe it at first, towards the end of his life Douglas said that he thought his brother had committed suicide, but the truth will almost certainly never be known.” (68)

“In their final meeting Wilde kissed the finger Douglas squeezed through the iron grating in the interview room. Both men vowed that they would hold their love for each other, whatever followed – a promise that, in the event, Douglas kept far more conscientiously than Wilde.” (82)

“The prosecution laid heavy emphasis on Wilde’s writings, particularly on his letters to Douglas, which had been ‘found’ by Alfred Wood. Douglas had given the unemployed clerk several of his old suits, and Wood claimed that he had found the letters in the pockets. Wood was in league with two other blackmailers, Allen and Clibborn, and it is highly improbable that Douglas would have been so careless. A likely explanation is that Wood simply stole the letters from Douglas’s rooms at Oxford, where he had worked as a valet.” (83) This is a new explanation to me, and it does make sense!

“While Douglas was making his literary reputation in Paris, Wilde was languishing in Reading gaol, and had turned against his friend in the most astonishing way. Douglas had never let slip his promise to Wilde: he waited for two years for Wilde to come back to him; the memory of their last meetings and of Wilde’s passionate and devoted letters extolling him to hold their love in the period when it would be most at threat had remained with him daily. He had worked ceaselessly, however unsuccessfully, for Wilde’s cause, and had endured slights and ridicule for refusing to drop him. In prison Wilde had been unable to stick by his ideals. In a letter written before his conviction Wilde had told Douglas that ‘I have had moments when I thought it would be wiser to separate. Ah! moments of weakness and madness.’ In prison he was overtaken by a long, sustained moment of weakness and madness.” (99)

“Robert Ross always claimed that he had sent Douglas a typescript of De Profundis, knowing that Douglas would be likely to destroy it after he had read it. Douglas claimed that he never received it. He said he had received an extended letter from Ross while Wilde was still in prison, with quotes from Wilde, and that after reading a few pages he had torn it up and flung it into the river Marne, which was by his house. If the letter was De Profundis then Douglas did not read very far into it, for when part of it was published in book form in 1905 he reviewed it and saw nothing to remind him of the letter he had received. If he had received a typescript of the full letter he would surely have asked if there were other copies of it and where the original was. It seems that the letter Douglas claimed he received and threw in the river was something other than De Profundis. On the one occasion that Wilde alluded to it, Douglas thought he was referring to the letter he had actually received from Ross, which contained quotations of what Wilde thought of his former friend, and when Wilde thought that Douglas was referring to it, he said, in words to the effect, ‘Surely you are not bringing up against me what I wrote in prison when I was starving and half mad.’” (102)

“Another person was present at the wedding. From the back of the church Robert Ross watched as the lover of his greatest friend, the golden Adonis and fated love of Oscar Wilde, married a woman in a Christian ceremony celebrating their love. Douglas had found a love that spoke its name and had a right to do so in the eyes of the law as well as in the eyes of society. As he sat and brooded, Ross took in a scene he would never forget and which he could not forgive.” (133) This seems a little melodramatic and unfounded for me.

“The question of why Douglas behaved as he did during the next few years is difficult to answer. Why did he alienate almost all of his family and former friends? To begin with, it was a family trait. Lady Queensberry told Wilde that she felt Alfred to have been the only one of her children to have inherited ‘the fatal Douglas temperament’. Many thought that during the last years of his life, Queensberry suffered an acute form of persecution mania, as had his brother, long before his suicide. However, Lord Alfred Douglas had wit, charm, beauty and intelligence, which his father’s generation generally lacked. Perhaps the suspicious and paranoid side of his father’s nature would not have appeared in the optimistic, trusting and care-free young man, to take him into a quarrelsome and litigious middle age, without the Oscar Wilde affair.” (162)

“It was an unusually open attack for Ross, who, though he had certainly been less than honest with Douglas, was not the evil psychopath his former friend believed him to be.” (224-5) I’m glad Murray is able to acknowledge this.

“Of course Douglas’s Autobiography is as much about Oscar Wilde as it is about himself and, indeed, in foreign editions it was called My Friendship with Oscar Wilde. Though the book starts in a conventional enough way with ‘I was born on the 22nd of October 1870, in a house called Ham Hill . . .’ less than half a dozen pages into the book Douglas makes his first mention of the feuds that had featured in his life. From then on it is downhill all the way. He tried to stick to a chronological time-scale but jumped about maddeningly. He was too desperate to get the facts on to the page and was unable to hold off his attacks on Harris and the other people who had treated him so badly over the years. Though at times the book is a fantastically vivid depiction of an era, the overall effect is of a mass of information, which leaves the reader confused.
“The other unfortunate thing about the Autobiography is that it contains no evidence of Douglas’s sense of humour, that wit ‘quite of his own’ described by Ada Leverson. Instead he was trying to impress his readers with the good side of his character.” (270)

“Douglas was hypercritical rather than lazy. The early poems he had written had been highly praised by critics who knew what they were talking about and for whom Douglas had much respect. The trouble was that great praise early on had destroyed in him the ability to achieve his potential. Having written a number of sonnets in his twenties, which were considered by some of the best judges of the day to be among the greatest works of poetry in the language, the thought of following them with anything less good horrified him. Therefore after ‘The Wastes of Time’ most of Douglas’s attempts to write poetry had been impossible and anything which was contemplated never got beyond the stage of working-out.” (284)

“The visit of Muggeridge, Pearson and Kingsmill put them on good terms with Douglas, and Douglas gave constant support and encouragement to Pearson during the writing of his Life of Oscar Wilde, although Pearson was not particularly graceful in acknowledging him in later editions of the work. While Douglas lay on his deathbed he gave time to Pearson, carefully and conscientiously correcting and advising on the proofs. In an Appendix to the book Pearson made a studied, though rounded, attack on Douglas which does Pearson few favours. He made much of the single occasion on which he pushed Douglas’s patience too far, but failed to credit the numerous occasions when Douglas treated him with magnanimity. Fortunately Douglas was not alive to see his kindness thrown back at him”. (292) Oh??! Ha. I knew I was right to not like Pearson.

“Douglas was amazed when he saw Virginia Woolf’s name on the petition. He admitted to Stopes that he greatly admired her novels and it seems curious that this single modernist should have so appealed to Douglas when none of the others did. One of the reasons he was so surprised to see her signature was because her husband, Leonard, had damned Douglas’s Autobiography in the New Statesman in 1929. Douglas, who saw these writers far too quickly as groups who stuck to each other’s opinions, wrote Virginia Woolf a letter, the only known direct exchange between the two.” (305) Virginia Woolf was one of the people who signed a petition for Douglas to get a civil list pension for services to literature (which never happened).

“Although he had difficulty with it, Douglas wrote a lengthy and eloquent defence of Wilde in his new book [Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up], although it was only ‘the assurance that Wilde died a Catholic that has enabled me to undertake the task of writing this book.’ But more important was that Douglas, with astonishing bravery in view of the then prevailing attitude, wrote a brilliant defence of homosexuality, telling his readers that, although as a Catholic he regarded it as a sin, just as many other forms of sex were sinful, it should not be crime. The opinions are those he held as a young man writing in the Mercure de France and La Revue Blanche in 1896, but now with the perspective of a Catholic.” (309) This is interesting and I haven’t seen this said before about this book—makes me want to read it more, but I’m pretty sure it’s out of print and my uni library doesn’t have it.

“Douglas called his new book Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up. It was his last word on Wilde. ‘I am glad I’ve written it,’ he told a friend. ‘It will set things right for ever.’ In the book he recaptured Wilde the man, the companion, the raconteur, and the atmosphere of gaiety the two men had enjoyed half a century earlier. On one of the last occasions on which he met Rupert Croft-Cooke, Douglas told him, ‘The worst of De Profundis is that it makes our friendship seem a solemn sort of thing, crossed with terrible quarrels. But we were laughing most of the time – often at one another. There were whole days we laughed our way through. I remember once at Torquay going into a hotel for breakfast – I forget why now – and being told by the waiter that there was some nice fish. ‘If you knew the breeding habits of fish you would scarcely call them nice,’ said Oscar. Not a remark to treasure perhaps, but it led us into endless absurdities . . . That’s what people, simple unintellectual people, loved about Oscar – he could make them laugh. Even the wretched young men who gave evidence against him. Far more than cigarette-cases and meals at Kettner’s. He made the dullest of them gay and amusing. He brought out oddity and humour in them which they never knew they possessed.’” (311)

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe two stars is harsh but I just can’t find too much to like about this book. I’ve no problem with an attempt to rescue someone’s reputation - and I was looking forward to seeing what he had - but that has to be built on fresh perspectives on their own character and circumstances. The author here couldn’t offer that much in that line and resorted to rubbishing the characters of the absolute congregation of people who Douglas had fallen out with or had turned on him as a result of his own behaviour. I found few examples in Douglas’s own actions to persuade me he’s been misunderstood, which itself would have been fine, but the spite against others as a means to accommodate this was a bridge too far for me. And, frankly, his life doesn’t make that much of a read once you get past the Wilde years. There’s a large concentration on his poetry which might interest some. I’m not a big reader of poetry so the theme that his poetry was his greatest achievement may well have merit but I’m not qualified to judge.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in Oscar Wilde, this book is a must-read. Murray, the author, has had the great idea of investigating the one who enthralled Wilde with his beauty, but about whom very little is known: lord Alfred Douglas, the blonde young man who, besides being Wilde's lover, was also a reknown poet. He's the one who wrote the famous sentence "the love that dare not speak its name". It is a fascinating biography because Douglas is a complex, strange, hard to grasp character, and Murray has done an amazing job at reconstructing his life and analyzing his life, his personality, his work, his psyche. Especially surprising is Douglas' life after his affair with Wilde, and what became of him. He does not especially comes out as an endearing man, especially in his late years, yet there's something slightly sad and pathetic about him.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm usually more of an autobiography fan, but I found this book to be one which I could not put down. A fascinating insight into the incredible life of Oscar Wilde's partner. Full of historical context and written in a way which literally draws you into to a life of so many extremes. Highly recommended.

[Anna Kļaviņa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really attention-grabbing read and Mr Murray, in my opinion, has done excellent work researching and writing biography of Lord Alfred Douglas.

[Madelina Calcagni · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is very good

[Vera Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Douglas Murray’s main gifts is his objectivity and clear view.
This comes through so beautifully in this book; with it’s uncensorious narrative, I could not help but quite like Alfred Douglas whose life included interesting characters and intellectuals of the day e.g. Arthur Ransome, H.G.Wells.
Murray’s own love for poetry, would have made this the ideal focus, along with his talent for laying out the facts, and he showed here in his first book before he was 20, the same sort of impeccable recording of law court facts and arguments that he showed in ‘Bloody Sunday’, which he exactingly researched, and published, 11 years after Bosie.
Poor old Bosie, what a shame that he had never had the teaching about forgiveness that Murray speaks/writes about for getting over the stumbling blocks of life. Maybe with an enactment of forgiveness he would not have been his own worst enemy and the latent paranoia may not have been his overriding motivation in so much aggravation.

I felt what a shame that people like him, have all advantages, but one:- they are not nurtured in scriptural morality, which might have protected his mindset from giving in to the soul or the flesh, as it’s often called; and also wisdom to make right decisions, dispassionately, and again with the moral influence behind those decisions. It was gratifying to me to read of his clearer thinking in later years, but yet still studded with his uncontrollable emotions.

Philip Larkin hit the nail on the head with his poem, This Be The Verse:- They f…. you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to, but they do.....
And with that concept in mind I always like to make my own assessment of the characters in various spheres of life.
There are 3 angles by which I view this interesting exposure of these 2 unregenerate [in the unconverted spiritual sense of the word] men, Douglas and Wilde.
1 - The close camaraderie of men, which I view through scripture: 1 Samuel 18:1
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
2 - The effect of the family on all offspring, generally the mother, who is often wont to dominate their sons, which, in males, can develop too much feminine emotion.
3 - Without the moral upbringing, they can succumb either willingly or not to advances from predatory males, which often sets them on a course for their lives.
4 - And one more that seems so evident the Father, especially and Alfred, and others in their line, that there is a case to understand how a curse can come down a family line up to 4 generations. Exodus 34:7

By the end of the book I can see what a valuable addition to the oeuvre of any author, but especially the deep and clear thinking Douglas Murray.

[David Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this detailed and thoroughly researched biography, Bosie Douglas comes across as a bitter, vindictive man torn between love and hate for Oscar Wilde, whose downfall was brought about as much by Bosie and his father as by his own love of life in the gutter (from where, as we know, there is a view of the stars).

The young Bosie has been accurately portrayed in all the movies: lazy, spoiled and petulant. He graduated from college flirtations to commercial sex with London rent-boys (then called ‘renters’). Wilde was going to seed by the time they met; Bosie’s infatuation was more for the playwright and wit than for the bedroom partner. But he loyally visited Oscar every day while he was awaiting trial for sexual offences after the collapse of his libel case against Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry.

Douglas Murray believes Bosie ‘went straight’ after he converted to Catholicism and married Olive, a fellow poet. But he never could not let go of the past. He wrote several books about his relationship with Wilde and got involved in a long series of libel cases, many centred on Robert Ross, Oscar’s ‘ex’ from way back who deserves much of the credit for safeguarding Wilde’s legacy, the plays. Bosie edited a series of short-lived literary magazines and ‘discovered’ some notable poets, including Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke.

Murray’s major achievement is perhaps in arguing the case for Bosie to be recognized as a poet of some significance. Several critics of the time (and again when he was republished in the 1950s) rank Alfred Douglas’s sonnets alongside Shakespeare’s. How highly is he rated today? His early poems (many invocations to ‘the love that dare not speak its name’) are a bit twee. The middle ones are vituperative, reflecting his long period of litigiousness. Then sanctimony gets the better of him as he becomes an increasingly hardcore Catholic and denounces homosexuality.

This is not an easy book to read, especially for non-poetry lovers. Full of a queeny bitchiness and endlessly self-pitying, Alfred Douglas was neither lovable nor likeable. In death as in life, Bosie gets co-star status in the drama of the rise and fall of a great literary figure.

[Susannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good biography, well researched, Murray clearly had access to lots of evidence relating to the life of Douglas. I read this because I am a huge Oscar Wilde fan so only know about Bosie through his relationship to Oscar Wilde which is the same I am sure for lots of people. This gives an account of his whole life which I found interesting. However, there were things I did not like about it such as the glossing over of his anti-semitism/racism and some of the assertions about his relationship with and behaviour towards Oscar Wilde for example Murray is at pains to establish that Wilde lied in De Profundis in his tirade against Douglas but then goes on to prove through the account of Bosie’s later life that much of this was true for example his hatred of certain people blinding him and his inability to live within his means. I think that Wilde was prone to exaggeration but also that more than one things can be true at the same time so therefore it is like that he was telling the truth about all the tings Bosie did, but Wilde did not need Bosie’s influence to be a big spender.

I will also never be brought around to the idea that Bosie was a great poet, some of his poetry is ok and borders on good such as the ending of Two Love, but the majority is mediocre at best and that is being very generous. He may have been a great poet if he had put any effort in rather than wasting time and energy libelling people and going to court and spending money he did not have. Overall this biography paints a sad picture of someone who pretty much wasted his life with petty grievances.

[Sharon Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie, is best known for his fateful relationship with Oscar Wilde. Douglas Murray does his level best to add a bit more flesh to the bones, principally by celebrating Douglas's poetry. In his day, Douglas was a respected, if minor, poet, who was especially good at the sonnet form. Unfortunately, try as I might, I could find no special merit in Douglas's verse, with the exception of The Dead Poet:

I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face
All radiant and unshadowed of distress,
And as of old, in music measureless,
I heard his golden voice and marked him trace
Under the common thing the hidden grace,
And conjure wonder out of emptiness,
Till mean things put on beauty like a dress
And all the world was an enchanted place.

And then methought outside a fast locked gate
I mourned the loss of unrecorded words,
Forgotten tales and mysteries half said,
Wonders that might have been articulate,
And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds.
And so I woke and knew that he was dead.

This poem is, of course, about Oscar Wilde. Douglas could never escape this relationship, which overshadowed his entire life. The biography chronicles his attempts to edit and promote various literary journals and his many lawsuits, one of which involved Winston Churchill. The crown, on behalf of Churchill, sued Douglas for libellous accusations published in his journal, "Plain English". Douglas lost the case and was sentenced to six months in prison. He had previously been bankrupted in a failed case against the writer Arthur Ransome. None of this, however, discouraged him from using the courts.

In later life Douglas converted to Catholicism and totally rejected his gay past. He even married - an interesting woman called Olive Custance, who first approached him by presenting herself dressed as a boy! They managed to make a go of it long enough to produce a son, Raymond, who unhappily spent most of his life in psychiatric institutions. Eventually they parted, but did not divorce and remained on good terms.

Douglas's politics were deeply conservative and he was a virulent anti-Semite, though he stopped short of endorsing Hitler's treatment of the Jews.

There has always been speculation that mental illness ran in the Douglas family. His hated father, the Marquis of Queensberry, was known as a brutal man, an outspoken atheist and something of a thug, who transgressed the social etiquette of his class by his flamboyant behaviour. Several of his relatives committed suicide or became alcoholics.

It is easy to see mental health issues in the character of his son, as presented in this biography and in various accounts of the life of Oscar Wilde. His turnabout, from idle, hedonistic youth to moralistic religious conservative, seems a violent swinging of the pendulum. Alfred Douglas seems to have lacked a solid centre to his character. A very sad tale of a beautiful youth with the world before him and the love of a great man, to a thoroughly unpleasant, embittered, vituperative and vexatious litigant, with few friends and not much to show for his life.

[Sue Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book because I love Douglas Murray's later works, and I was interested in what he might make of 'Bosie' and his connection with Oscar Wilde. Spoiler: I think both of these men were obnoxious. If I had known Murray wrote this work when he was so young, I wouldn't have gone near it. But perhaps he still stands by it....
Poor Constance, Wilde's wife, noted as having tears on her face as she tried to persuade her husband to come home from his weekend hotel stay with chaps (inc Bosie) sharing his hotel room - then Murray saying she knew nothing of his homosexual activities before the trial!
I'm pretty sure she knew, and suffered.
Ghastly business all around. The rent boys, shit on the sheets at the bolt holes they took them to, the complete disregard of others. Repulsive. And the charges that Bosie preyed on the children of his friends; Murray says that was just gossip, maybe, but the life of these two was so (I'm gonna say it) unwholesome and self-serving that IMO it is vile.

[Carlos Olmo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly interesting and tragic life. I didn't know anything about Alfred Douglas, but the detailed writing of Murray and the dramatic story itself engaged me from the beginning. The background of the taboo of homosexuality around the turn of the century is ever present - and his relationship with Oscar Wilde in particular which marked his life since he became an adult up until he died, is especially fascinating. The evolution of Douglas' difficulties understanding, rejecting, and finally accepting his own youth feelings, dealing with changes in faith, moral beliefs, societal norms and attacks from enemies, captivated me and was very informative as a historical description of the time.

[David Allwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously books about the Wilde / Bosie affair usually focus on Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) is often reduced to a supporting role. And so this book, telling the life of Bosie, is long overdue. Unfortunately, it is written in such a dour academic style it is difficult to last the distance. What is a fascinating story, about an intriguing historical figure, has produced a dry, rambling, formal book. The decision, also, by the author to focus on the little known poetry of Bosie is strange, and to recount the details of his poetry is to miss the core of the story. Disappointingly, this book is a boring missed opportunity.

[Trevor Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review contains spoilers.

Boise was a mercurial, volatile man with decided opinions prone to re-inventing himself. He brought court cases for slander and libel against those he thought had slighted him.

Murray makes much of the fact that, especially towards the latter part of Bosie's life, his poetry was highly regarded.

After Wilde's death, Bosie turned against him even repudiating his own homosexuality.

The most affecting parts of the book are the pages dealing with Bosie's final years. He was virtually a pauper, relying on the goodwill of friends to help him with day to day living costs.

A well written, enjoyable biography.

[MS A · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read

It’s hard to believe that this was written by a teenager, albeit an extremely clever one about to take up a place at Oxford. This is like nothing else I’ve ever read by Douglas Murray. It really is a fascinating account of Lord Alfred Douglas‘s life, particularly as it completely changes after Oscar Wilde’s death. Excellent if you’re a fan of Wilde, Alfred Douglas, sonnets. I’m none of these, but I still loved it. Even though Douglas Murray can be terribly pompous in his political writing, there is none of that here.

[Jeni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between 3 and 4 stars -- it's a well-written and well researched book (almost too much so, as it was at times difficult to read because so much information was being given). I didn't know much about Lord Alfred Douglas except for his role in Oscar Wilde's downfall, so it was good to see how the rest of his life panned out and see him for the complex human he was, rather than just his association with Wilde.

[Ross Dorianycc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tre stelle solo perché si vede che l'autore era terribilmente di parte e giovane quando ha scritto questa biografia. Per il resto, che pesantezza mi lascia...un po' perché Alfred sembrava del tutto fuori controllo per gran parte del tempo, un po' perché forse i disturbi mentali non trattati lo hanno solo affossato - non aiutato affatto dalla croce di Oscar che non gli hanno mai tolto dalle spalle.

[Mick Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

A heavy going hook.the relationship between bosie and oscar Wilde is covered in the first third of the book.it then goes into great detail of his litigations against anybody that he thought had blackened his name.i couldn't determine whether it was to get back at the establishment for the condemnation of oscar or it was a genetic fault passed on by his father.did find it dragged on a bit but it's up to other readers to make up their mind.