Douglas Murray’s first book – published when the author was just 19 and still an undergraduate at Oxford – sets out to chronicle the life of Lord Alfred Douglas, the much maligned and little understood muse of Oscar Wilde. It is Murray’s intention to demonstrate that Douglas was not the petulant, shallow youth of popular perception; it is only reasonable to suggest that this endeavour produces mixed results. Whereas Murray’s study of Douglas’s youth is revelatory – dispensing, for example, with the outdated idea that Douglas entirely abandoned Wilde in his time of need – some of his arguments are less successful. This reviewer remains unconvinced as to Douglas’s own literary merit; and it would take a tremendously skilful apologist – a part Murray is too canny to play – to convince the fair-minded reader that Douglas’s final years were much more than tragicomic in outcome. Continue reading
James Snell 