Scandal to celebration Oscar Wilde's grandson traces the shadow cast by the playwright's trial and his rehabilitation

Today, Oscar Wilde is one of the most celebrated writers in English. His plays are performed. His words are quoted. But it was not always so.

- By Matthew Sturgis

When he died in Paris, in 1900, aged just 46, the obituaries were not generous. There was a feeling of relief that an embarrassing figure had been removed the scene, and a general hope that he and his works would soon be forgotten. The Pall Mall Gazette suggested that nothing he wrote had “the strength to endure”.

Just five years before, he had been the toast of London, with two successful plays running in the West End, but his arrest and conviction on charges of “gross indecency with male persons” had precipitated a very spectacular fall. Two years in prison were followed by three years of disgrace, continental exile, poverty and declining health, before his sad end.

His long-suffering wife, Constance, had predeceased him, and although his two sons - 15-year-old Cyril and 14-year-old Vyvyan, survived, they were at schools in England, camouflaged with the adopted surname “Holland”, and ignorant of their father’s whereabouts.

The story of Oscar’s glorious posthumous rehabilitation, together with the long shadow that he cast over his two sons and continues to cast over his single grandchild, is the subject of this fascinating book - written, with an engaging combination of wit, personal candour and scholarly rigour, by the grandchild himself, Merlin Holland.