Podcast The Rest is History recently devoted two episodes to Oscar Wilde’s trials.
The Rest is History is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. I am a loyal listener and have learnt a lot from hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook about many historical events with which I was not previously familiar.
As a Wilde scholar I was excited to see dropping into my podcast feed two episodes on the trials of Oscar Wilde. I enjoyed both episodes, and was pleased to discover that they drew not on Richard Ellmann’s error-riddled Oscar Wilde (1987) but on Matthew Sturgis’s more recent and reliable Oscar: A Life (2018).
Nevertheless, I was able to detect a few factual errors. For the benefit of other fans of the podcast, I list these errors and offer my corrections.
I have time-stamped my corrections to the episodes as they appear on YouTube, as timings on the downloadable versions of the podcast vary due to the insertion of dynamic advertising spots.
Episode 341 (Part 1: Sex and Scandal)
04:26 ‘He takes degrees at Trinity College Dublin […] he then goes to Oxford, does classics, wins all kinds of prizes there’.
Wilde did attend Trinity College Dublin, but did not take a degree there. He was awarded a double-first at Oxford in Greats and Literae Humaniores (classics). At Dublin he won the Berkeley medal for Greek; at Oxford the only prize he won was the Newdigate prize for poetry.
04:41 ‘He sets himself up really [in London] as as a kind of professional aesthete, to the degree that Gilbert and Sullivan write an opera about him’.
Wilde was an aesthete but not strictly a ‘professional’ one, because between 1879–1881 he had not yet found a way to monetise his notoriety. Gilbert and Sullivan wrote the aesthetic satire Patience, but it was not about or even inspired by Wilde: the aesthete character Bunthorne was instead based on the more famous James McNeill Whistler. Only later, in America in 1882, were the visual styles of Wilde and Bunthorne aligned (Wilde adopted Bunthorne’s knee breeches; Bunthorne, Wilde’s long hair).Marland, R. (ed.) (2022) Oscar Wilde: The Complete Interviews , Jena: Little Eye, II, 794; Marland, R. (2026) Oscar Wilde’s First Tragedy: The Composition, Production, and Reception of Vera; or, The Nihilists, Jena: Little Eye, 154, 159, 194
04:50 ‘Wilde goes to America with the opera, and he famously arrives wearing all kinds of incredible clothing and is asked “does he have anything to declare?” and says “I have only my genius”’.
Wilde did not strictly go to America with the opera, as it premiered several months before he arrived, although he was employed by the promoter of the opera as a cross-promotional tactic. He did not say upon arriving in America that he had nothing to declare but his genius: this long-standing myth has been thoroughly debunked by John Cooper, the foremost expert on Wilde’s time in America.
06:31 ‘He [Dorian Gray] has a picture up in the attic’.
Gray’s picture is not kept in the attic as many people believe, but in a disused schoolroom within his house.
07:47 ‘He marries Constance Holland’.
Constance took the name Holland in 1895, after Wilde’s downfall. When she married Wilde in 1884 her surname was Lloyd.
14:57 ‘He does meet the great love of his life, who is Alfred, Lord Douglas’.
Douglas was more properly styled Lord Alfred Douglas, as his title was a courtesy one due to his being a son of a marquess. That is, he was not a lord in his own right, as ‘Alfred, Lord Douglas’ would imply.
15:42 ‘He is having assignations with much younger men – men aged eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one’.
Several of Wilde’s known sexual partners were as young as seventeen; one – Alphonse Conway – was sixteen.Ross, I. (2019) ‘I took pleasure where it pleased me’, The Wildean, 55, 90–98 Later in the episode (28:05) this fact is stated correctly.
44:23 ‘The magistrate who issues the writ [for Wilde’s arrest], he finds out what time [the train from London leaves], that will link up to the ferry that will go over to France, and he issues it for fifteen minutes after that train’.
This is a long-standing myth that can be traced back at least as far as H. Montgomery Hyde’s The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1962). Hyde writes:
It has been said that the magistrate was careful to inquire the time of the boat-train’s departure from the clerk of the court, and on receiving this information, to have fixed the time of the application a quarter of an hour later.Hyde, H. M. (1973) The Trials of Oscar Wilde, New York: Dover, 152
Merlin Holland debunks the myth in Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (2003), where he writes:
It has often been said that the issue of the warrant was delayed until after the departure of the last boat-train for the Continent, allowing Wilde time to escape if he chose, but this absurd; Wilde was arrested at 6.20 p.m. and, according to Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, there were four more cross-Channel departures until 9.45 that evening.Holland, M. (2003) Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, London: Fourth Estate, xxxi
Joseph Bristow, in Oscar Wilde on Trial (2022), states that the home secretary H. H. Asquith determined by 3.30 p.m. that Wilde should be arrested; an application was made to Sir John Bridge at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court; Bridge adjourned the court so that he could examine the evidence against Wilde at the Treasury; he returned to court just before 5 p.m. and signed the warrant; a police inspector took the warrant to Scotland Yard and within ten minutes of his arrival had arranged for a message to be relayed to all district police stations that Wilde was to be arrested.Bristow, J. (2022) Oscar Wilde on Trial: The Criminal Proceedings, from Arrest to Imprisonment, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 143–144 The myth is not repeated by Ellmann or Sturgis, so it seems likely that the podcast hosts obtained their information on this point from Hyde.
Episode 342 (Part 2: Downfall and Prison)
28:25 [The story of Wilde being jeered at and spat on by members of the public at Clapham Junction railway station]
Merlin Holland, in After Oscar (2025), suggests that this story ‘may have owed a little more to Oscar’s imagination than just to the bare facts’, and that Wilde was probably transferred from one train to another at nearby York Road station, rather than at Clapham Junction, the busiest station in Europe.Holland, M. (2025) After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal, London: Europa Editions, 518
34:27 ‘The establishment don’t want to humiliate him, so there’s a lot of subterfuge [relating to Wilde’s release from prison], basically they move him to Pentonville [Prison]’.
Wilde was not moved from Reading to Pentonville on the day prior to his release for reasons of subterfuge but because it was necessary for convicts to be released from the prison to which they had been admitted at the start of their sentence: in Wilde’s case, that was Pentonville.