'THE MOUSETRAP,' AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MURDER MYSTERY

Today, The Morgans & The Grandma has bought some tickets to see The Mousetrap in London's West End, a play written by Agatha Christie that opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1952.

The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie.

The Mousetrap opened in London's West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be discontinued due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The longest-running West End show, it has by far the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 27,500th performance taking place on 18 September 2018.

The play has a twist ending, which the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal after leaving the theatre. The play began life as a short radio play written as a birthday present for Queen Mary, the consort of King George V. It was broadcast on 30 May 1947 under the name Three Blind Mice starring Barry Morse. The story drew from the real-life case of Dennis O'Neill, who died after he and his brother Terence suffered extreme abuse while in the foster care of a Shropshire farmer and his wife in 1945.

The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London. The short story has still not been published within the United Kingdom, but it has appeared in the United States in the 1950 collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories.

When she wrote the play, Christie gave the rights to her grandson Matthew Prichard as a birthday present. In the United Kingdom, only one production of the play in addition to the West End production can be performed annually, and under the contract terms of the play, no film adaptation can be produced until the West End production has been closed for at least six months.

The play had to be renamed at the insistence of Emile Littler who had produced a play called Three Blind Mice in the West End before the Second World War. The suggestion to call it The Mousetrap came from Christie's son-in-law, Anthony Hicks.

More information: The Mousetrap

In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, The Mousetrap is Hamlet's answer to Claudius's inquiry about the name of the play whose prologue and first scene the court has just observed (III, ii). The play is actually The Murder of Gonzago, but Hamlet answers metaphorically, since the play's the thing in which he intends to catch the conscience of the king. Three Blind Mice or its tune is heard a few times during the play.

The play's longevity has ensured its popularity with tourists from around the world. In 1997, at the initiative of producer Stephen Waley-Cohen, the theatrical education charity Mousetrap Theatre Projects was launched, helping young people experience London's theatre.

The play's storyline is set at the present, which presumably means England as it was around the time when the play came out in 1952, including postwar continuation of World War II rationing.

Tom Stoppard's 1968 play The Real Inspector Hound parodies many elements of The Mousetrap, including the surprise ending.

As a stage play, The Mousetrap had its world premiere at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 6 October 1952.

It was originally directed by Peter Cotes, elder brother of John and Roy Boulting, the film directors. Its pre-West End tour then took it to the New Theatre Oxford, the Manchester Opera House, the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, the Grand Theatre Leeds and the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham before it began its run in London on 25 November 1952 at the Ambassadors Theatre.

It ran at this theatre until Saturday, 23 March 1974 when it immediately transferred to the larger St Martin's Theatre, next door, where it reopened on Monday, 25 March thus keeping its initial run status. The London run has now exceeded 26,000 performances. The director of the play for many years has been David Turner.

Christie herself did not expect The Mousetrap to run for such a long time. In her autobiography, she reports a conversation that she had with Peter Saunders: Fourteen months I am going to give it, says Saunders. To which Christie replies, It won't run that long. Eight months, perhaps. Yes, I think eight months. When it broke the record for the longest run of a play in the West End in September 1957, Christie received a mildly grudging telegram from fellow playwright Noël Coward: Much as it pains me, I really must congratulate you...

In 2011, by which time The Mousetrap had been running for almost 59 years, this long-lost document was found by a Cotswold furniture maker who was renovating a bureau purchased by a client from the Christie estate. By the time of Christie's death in 1976 the play made more than £3 million.

More information: The Guardian

The original West End cast included Richard Attenborough as Detective Sergeant Trotter and his wife Sheila Sim as Mollie Ralston.

Since the retirement of Mysie Monte and David Raven, who each made history by remaining in the cast for more than 11 years, in their roles as Mrs Boyle and Major Metcalf, the cast has been changed annually. The change usually occurs around late November around the anniversary of the play's opening, and was the initiative of Sir Peter Saunders, the original producer. There is a tradition of the retiring leading lady and the new leading lady cutting a Mousetrap cake together.

The play has also made theatrical history by having an original cast member survive all the cast changes since its opening night. The late Deryck Guyler can still be heard, via a recording, reading the radio news bulletin in the play to this present day. The set was changed in 1965 and 1999, but one prop survives from the original opening -the clock, which sits on the mantelpiece of the fireplace in the main hall.

In May 2001, during the London production's 49th year, and to mark the 25th anniversary of Christie's death, the cast gave a semi-staged Sunday performance at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea as a guest contribution to the Agatha Christie Theatre Festival 2001, a twelve-week history-making cycle of all of Agatha Christie's plays presented by Roy Marsden's New Palace Theatre Company.

Performances at the St. Martin's Theatre were halted on 16 March 2020 with all other West End shows due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. 

The Mousetrap re-opened on 17 May 2021 after 14 months without performances.

More information: Official London Theatre

Crime is terribly revealing.
Try and vary your methods as you will,
your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind,
and your soul is revealed by your actions.

Agatha Christie

'PHANTOM OF THE OPERA' IS ALWAYS A MUST IN LONDON

Today, The Morgans & The Grandma want to enjoy a wonderful musical, the Phantom of the Opera, one of the most popular shows in London, which is widely considered one of the world's most beautiful and spectacular musicals. Since 1986, it has played to over 160 million people in 217 cities and 23 languages.

Before this, the family has studied some English grammar with Interrogative Pronouns and Adverbs of Frequency.

 

More information: Adverbs of Frequency

More information: Interrogative pronouns

Enjoy ESL Cyber Listening Lab 

The story of the Phantom of the Opera was originally published in a series of articles in La Galois and then in a book in 1911 entitled, Le Fantôme de l’Opéra written by a French journalist, Gastón Leroux. 

When the story was first published it was not popular and the book went out of print.

Leroux whose speciality was investigative journalism based his story on true-life incidents. In fact, many who have researched this subject believe with just a few exceptions the story has several elements that are true.

The opera house in the story was based on the real Opera Garnier in Paris. The Opera Garnier does have underground tunnels and it also has an underground lake. Leroux used this setting in several dramatic scenes in his story.

There was an incident where a chandelier did fall in the Opera Garnier setting the building on fire and killing a woman.

Leroux used a falling chandelier in his story as a distraction so his Phantom could kidnap Christine.

The romance between the Phantom and Christine in the story is just fantasy but it is believed that Leroux based both characters on real people.

 

More information: The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom is based upon a man named Erik who was born in a small village in Normandy, near Rouen. He was born with a horribly disfigured face so his parents abandoned him when he was eight. A circus basically took him and for 7 years he was used as an attraction.

It was believed that someone was secretly living in the opera house and many felt it was the ghost of the real Erik. In fact, many claimed that near Box 5 they heard ghostly voices and whispers when the area was unoccupied.

There were other witnesses that stated that they saw this phantom running through various parts of the opera house. Even more eerie these witnesses stated this figure wore a black cape and a mask over its face.

Renata de Waele in 1993 wrote a narrative that compared the fictional to the real stories. She worked in public relations at the Opera Garnier for many years. 

Some of her speculations have been proven others have not. So reality is blurred with fiction which leaves the curious with an intriguing mystery. 

Download The Phantom of The Opera by Gastón Leroux

 

Every legend, moreover, contains 

its residuum of truth, 

and the root function of language 

is to control the universe by describing it. 

James A. Baldwin

EVERTON VS LIVERPOOL ON THE BANKS OF THE MERSEY

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the origins of the two most popular football clubs in Liverpool, Everton FC and Liverpool FC.

Everton Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Liverpool that competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football.

The club was a founder member of the Football League in 1888, and has, as of August 2023, competed in the top division for a record 121 seasons, having missed only four top-flight seasons (1930-31, 1951-52, 1952-53, and 1953-54).  

Everton is the club with the second-longest continuous presence in English top-flight football, and ranks third in the all-time points rankings. The club has won nine league titles, five FA Cups, one European Cup Winners' Cup and nine Charity Shields.

Formed in 1878, Everton won their first League Championship during the 1890-91 season. After winning four more League championships and two FA Cups, the club experienced a post-Second World War lull until a revival in the 1960s. A period of sustained success came in the mid-1980s, when Everton won a further two League championships, one FA Cup, and the 1985 European Cup Winners' Cup. The club's most recent major trophy was the 1995 FA Cup.

The club's supporters are colloquially known as Evertonians or Blues. Everton's main rivals are Liverpool, whose home stadium at Anfield is just under one mile away from Everton's home at Goodison Park; the two clubs contest the Merseyside derby. 

Everton have been based at Goodison Park since 1892, having moved from their original home at Anfield following a disagreement with the landowner over their rent. The club's home colours are royal blue shirts with white shorts and socks.

More information: Everton FC

Liverpool Football Club is a professional football club based in Liverpool. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1892, the club joined the Football League the following year and has played its home games at Anfield since its formation.

Domestically, the club has won 19 league titles, eight FA Cups, a record nine League Cups and 16 FA Community Shields. In international competitions, the club has won six European Cups, three UEFA Cups, four UEFA Super Cups -all English records- and one FIFA Club World Cup. The club established itself as a major force in domestic and European football in the 1970s and 1980s, when Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish, led the club to a combined 11 League titles and four European Cups.

Liverpool won two further European Cups in 2005 and 2019 under the management of Rafael Benítez and Jürgen Klopp, respectively; the latter led Liverpool to a 19th league title in 2020, the club's first during the Premier League era.

Liverpool is one of the most valuable and widely supported clubs in the world. The club has long-standing rivalries with Manchester United and Everton. Under management by Shankly, in 1964 the team changed from red shirts and white shorts to an all-red home strip which has been used ever since. The club's anthem is You'll Never Walk Alone.

The club's supporters have been involved in two major tragedies. The Heysel Stadium disaster, where escaping fans were pressed against a collapsing wall at the 1985 European Cup Final in Brussels, resulted in 39 deaths. Most of these were Italians and Juventus fans.

Liverpool were given a six-year ban from European competition, and all other English clubs received a five-year ban. The Hillsborough disaster in 1989, where 97 Liverpool supporters died in a crush against perimeter fencing, led to the elimination of fenced standing terraces in favour of all-seater stadiums in the top two tiers of English football. Prolonged campaigning for justice saw further coroners inquests, commissions and independent panels that ultimately exonerated the fans.

More information: Liverpool FC

Football is a game of mistakes.
Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins.

Johan Cruyff

WE LOVE FOOTBALL CRAZILY, SO WE LIKE WATCHING LFC

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma arrived in Liverpool to spend two days visiting the city and witnessing the UCL match between Liverpool and PSG live at Anfield.

The family had breakfast with The Beatles, old friends of The Grandma with whom they talked about love and musical tastes.

The Grandma told a very interesting story about Alan Lomax and Rosalía whose indisputable works gives incalculable value to oral tradition and the classics.

After the visit, the family has been reviewing English grammar with Adverbs of Manner and State Verbs. They have also created templates for writing essays.

This evening, The Morgans will be special guests in the Anfield stadium box from where they will cheer on Liverpool and remind them that they will never walk alone. The whole family is very excited about this event, well not everyone, with the exception of Andrea Morgan, who doesn't like football.

More information: Adverbs of Manner

More information: State Verbs (I) & (II) 

More information: Alan Lomax Archive

Liverpool is a city in Merseyside, North West England. It is located on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, adjacent to the Irish Sea, and is approximately 286 km from London. The name comes from the Old English lifer, meaning thick or muddy water, and pōl, meaning a pool or creek, and is first recorded around 1190 as

All You Need Is Love is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a non-album single in July 1967.

It was written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The song was Britain's contribution to Our World, the first live global television link, for which the band were filmed performing it at EMI Studios in London on 25 June.

The programme was broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries. Lennon's lyrics were deliberately simplistic, to allow for the show's international audience, and captured the utopian ideals associated with the Summer of Love. The single topped sales charts in Britain, the United States and many other countries, and became an anthem for the counterculture's embrace of flower power philosophy.

Our World coincided with the height of the Beatles' popularity and influence, following the release of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rather than perform the song entirely live, the group played to a pre-recorded backing track. With an orchestral arrangement by George Martin, the song begins with a portion of the French national anthem and ends with musical quotations from works such as Glenn Miller's In the Mood, Greensleeves, Bach's Invention No. 8 in F major, and the Beatles' 1963 hit She Loves You. Adding to the broadcast's festive atmosphere, the studio was adorned with signs and streamers and filled with guests dressed in psychedelic attire, including members of the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Small Faces. Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, described the performance as the band's finest moment.

All You Need Is Love was later included on the US Magical Mystery Tour album and served as the moral for the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. Originally broadcast in black-and-white, the Our World performance was colourised for inclusion in the Beatles' 1995 Anthology documentary series.

While the song remains synonymous with the 1967 Summer of Love ethos and provided the foundation for Lennon's legacy as a humanitarian, numerous critics found the message naive in retrospect, particularly during the 1980s.

Since 2009, Global Beatles Day, an international celebration of the Beatles' music and social message, takes place on 25 June each year in tribute to their Our World performance.

In the decades following the record's release, Beatles biographers and music journalists criticised the lyrics as naive and simplistic and detected a smugness in the message; the song's musical content was similarly dismissed as unimaginative.

More information: The History Press

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

There's nothing you can do that can't be done (love)
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung (love)
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game (love)

 

The Beatles 

OUR DEAR LEILA, MAY THE FORCE BE ALWAYS WITH YOU!

See if you can spot this one
What will you do when you get lonely
And no one's waiting by your side?
You've been running and hiding much too long
You know it's just your foolish pride

LEILA
You've got me on my knees, Leila
Begging darling please, Leila
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?

Tried to give you consolation
Your old man, he let you down
Like a fool, I fell in love with you
You turned my whole world upside down

LEILA
You've got me on my knees, Leila
Begging darling please, Leila
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?

Make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane
Please don't say we'll never find a way
Or tell me all my love's in vain

LEILA
You've got me on my knees, Leila
Begging darling please, Leila
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?

THANK YOU

 Of all possessions, a friend is the most precious.

Herodotus

JANE GOODALL & DAVID ATTENBOROUGH AT LONDON ZOO

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have visited London Zoo. 

It has been a very special visit because they have had the amazing of two English celebrities: Jane Goodall, the English primatologist and anthropologist, and David Attenborough, the English broadcaster, natural historian and writer, who have been their guides and informants during this unforgettable visit.

Before the visit, the family has been reviewing English grammar with the Present Simple and Comparatives of Equality Adjectives.

More information: Present Simple

More information: Comparative Equality Adjectives

Download Animals Vocabulary 

London Zoo, previously known as ZSL London Zoo or London Zoological Gardens and sometimes called Regent's Park Zoo, is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study.

In 1831 or 1832, the animals of the Tower of London menagerie were transferred to the zoo's collection. It was opened to the public in 1847. As of December 2022, it houses a collection of 14,926 individuals, making it one of the largest collections in the United Kingdom.

It is managed under the aegis of the Zoological Society of London (established in 1826), and is situated at the northern edge of Regent's Park, on the boundary line between the City of Westminster and the borough of Camden (the Regent's Canal runs through it). 

The Society also has a more spacious site at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire to which the larger animals such as elephants and rhinos have been moved. As well as being the first scientific zoo, London Zoo also opened the first reptile house (1849), the first public aquarium (1853), first insect house (1881) and the first children's zoo (1938).

ZSL receives no state funding and relies on 'Fellows' and 'Friends' memberships, entrance fees, venue hire, and sponsorship to generate income.

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was established by Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir Humphry Davy in 1826, who obtained the land for the zoo and saw the plans before Raffles died of apoplexy (a stroke) later that year on 5 July, his birthday. After his death, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne took over the project and supervised the building of the first animal houses. The zoo opened in April 1828 to fellows of the Society, providing access to species such as Arabian oryx, greater kudus, orangutan and the now extinct quagga and thylacine. The Society was granted a royal charter in 1829 by King George IV, and in 1847 the zoo opened to the public to aid funding.

More information: London Zoo

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, 3 April 1934, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in 1960. 

She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace. 

More information: The Jane Goodall Institute

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in 1934 in Hampstead, to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, a novelist who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

As a child, as an alternative to a teddy bear her father gave Goodall a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, and she has said her fondness for this figure started her early love of animals, commenting that My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares. Today, Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.

Goodall had always been passionate about animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey, the notable Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals.  

Leakey, believing that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behaviour of early hominids, was looking for a chimpanzee researcher, though he kept the idea to himself. Instead, he proposed that Goodall work for him as a secretary. After obtaining approval from his wife Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where he laid out his plans.

In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. Leakey raised funds, and on 14 July 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be called The Trimates. She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of David Anstey, chief warden, who was concerned for their safety; Tanzania was Tanganyika at that time and a British protectorate.

 

More information: British Council

Leakey arranged funding and in 1962, he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to Cambridge University. She went to Newnham College, and obtained a PhD degree in ethology. 

She became the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD there without first having obtained a BA or BSc. Her thesis was completed in 1965 under the tutorship of Robert Hinde, titled Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.

Goodall is best known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life. She began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1960. Without collegiate training directing her research, Goodall observed things that strict scientific doctrines may have overlooked. Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she observed, she gave them names such as Fifi and David Greybeard, and observed them to have unique and individual personalities, an unconventional idea at the time. 

She found that, it isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow. She also observed behaviours such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and even tickling, what we consider human actions. 

Goodall insists that these gestures are evidence of the close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community, which can persist throughout a life span of more than 50 years. 

These findings suggest that similarities between humans and chimpanzees exist in more than genes alone, but can be seen in emotion, intelligence, and family and social relationships.

 

More information: National Geographic

 
Goodall's research at Gombe Stream is best known to the scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians. 

While observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively fishing for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of toolmaking. Humans had long distinguished ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as Man the Toolmaker. 

In response to Goodall's revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which supports the Gombe research, and she is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. 

With nineteen offices around the world, the JGI is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs in Africa. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots began in 1991 when a group of 16 local teenagers met with Goodall on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. The organisation now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries.

Goodall credits the 1986 Understanding Chimpanzees conference, hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences, with shifting her focus from observation of chimpanzees to a broader and more intense concern with animal-human conservation. She is the former president of Advocates for Animals, an organisation based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, zoos, farming and sport.

More information: Wanderlust

 

  

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans 

have been living for hundreds of thousands of years 

in their forest, living fantastic lives, 

never overpopulating, never destroying the forest.

I would say that they have been 

in a way more successful than us 

as far as being in harmony with the environment. 

Jane Goodall

OSCAR WILDE & MORALITY, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Today, it is cool and raining in London. The Grandma is resting at the Cumberland Hotel reading about the life of Oscar Wilde, the greatest Irish novelist and creator of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a masterpiece that shows us that the reckless pursuit of beauty and pleasure without moral responsibility leads to corruption and self-destruction. It highlights the danger of valuing appearance over the integrity of the soul. It is one of The Grandma's favourite novels of all time.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854-30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright.

After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, the early 1890s saw him become one of the most popular playwrights in London. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts, imprisonment, and early death at age 46.

Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.

As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new English Renaissance in Art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.

At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.

More information: The Paris Review

At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. 

After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897.

During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis, published posthumously in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.

On his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900. Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, inside the city. His tomb there was designed by Sir Jacob Epstein. It was commissioned by Robert Ross, who asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes, which were duly transferred in 1950.

In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017, homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967. The 2017 Act implements what is known informally as the Alan Turing law.

Download The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

 

No great artist ever sees things as they really are.

If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

 

Oscar Wilde