This talk with Margaret Mills looks at the life and times, the literary work and of course the witty sayings of a fascinating figure in the world of literature, a dramatist, playwright, poet and writer born 1854 whose work is still admired today. Oscar Wilde’s work has been the subject of films, theatre productions and TV and radio broadcasts, and his plays still enjoy enormous popularity, as does his only published novel – The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Wilde himself admitted that he had a compulsive urge to try new sensations, to break through boundaries and conventions, defying what he saw as dubious laws to which he did not want to conform. He defied traditional authority, inverted accepted values and ignored convention.
Today, the question is still being asked: did Oscar Wilde, always the dramatist, act out his own tragedy?