Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, was a British nobleman of the Victorian era, remembered for his atheism, his outspoken views, his brutish manner, for lending his name to the "Queensberry Rules" that form the basis of modern boxing, and for his role in the downfall of the Irish author and playwright Oscar Wilde.
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, that carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, starting a close but stormy relationship. Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but some intimate notes were found and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married a poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.
Marquess of Queensberry is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. The title has been held since its creation in 1682 by a member of the Douglas family. The Marquesses also held the title of Duke of Queensberry from 1684 to 1810, when it was inherited by the Duke of Buccleuch.
Wilde is a 1997 British biographical romantic drama film directed by Brian Gilbert. The screenplay, written by Julian Mitchell, is based on Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography of Oscar Wilde. It stars Stephen Fry in the title role, with Jude Law, Vanessa Redgrave, Jennifer Ehle, Gemma Jones, Judy Parfitt, Michael Sheen, Zoë Wanamaker, and Tom Wilkinson in supporting roles.
Cromwell is a 1970 British historical drama film written and directed by Ken Hughes. It is based on the life of Oliver Cromwell, who rose to lead the Parliamentary forces during the later years of the English Civil War and, as Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain and Ireland in the 1650s. It features an ensemble cast, led by Richard Harris as Cromwell and Alec Guinness as King Charles I, with Robert Morley as Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester and Timothy Dalton as Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
Oscar Wilde is a 1960 biographical film about Oscar Wilde, made by Vantage Films and released by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Gregory Ratoff and produced by William Kirby, from a screenplay by Jo Eisinger, based on the play Oscar Wilde by Leslie Stokes and Sewell Stokes. The film starred Robert Morley, Ralph Richardson, Phyllis Calvert and Alexander Knox.
Francis Archibald Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig, also 1st Baron Kelhead in his own right, was a British nobleman and Liberal politician.
Kenneth Graham Hughes was an English film director and screenwriter. He worked on over 30 feature films between 1952 and 1981, including the 1968 musical fantasy film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name. His other notable works included The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), Of Human Bondage (1964), Casino Royale (1967), and Cromwell (1970). He was an Emmy Award winner and a three-time BAFTA Award nominee.
Salome's Last Dance is a 1988 British film written and directed by Ken Russell. Although most of the action is a verbatim performance of Oscar Wilde's 1891 play Salome, which is itself based on a story from the New Testament, there is also a framing narrative that was written by Russell.
Francis Martin Sewell Stokes was an English novelist, biographer, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and prison visitor. He collaborated on a number of occasions with his brother, Leslie Stokes, an actor and later in life a BBC radio producer, with whom he shared a flat for many years overlooking the British Museum.
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is a 1997 play written and directed by Moisés Kaufman. It deals with Oscar Wilde's three trials on the matter of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and other men.
Events from the year 1895 in the United Kingdom.
Warwick Films was a film company founded by film producers Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli in London in 1951. The name was taken from the Warwick Hotel in New York where Broccoli and his wife were staying at the time of the final negotiations for the company's creation. Their films were released by Columbia Pictures.
The 14th British Academy Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1961, honoured the best films of 1960.
Robert Sholto Johnstone Douglas, known as Sholto Douglas, or more formally as Sholto Johnstone Douglas, was a Scottish figurative artist, a painter chiefly of portraits and landscapes.
De Profundis is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie".
Oscar Wilde's life and death have generated numerous biographies.
Sir Richard Somers Travers Christmas Humphreys was a noted British barrister and judge who, during a sixty-year legal career, was involved in the cases of Oscar Wilde and the murderers Hawley Harvey Crippen, George Joseph Smith and John George Haigh, the 'Acid Bath Murderer', among many others.
Christopher Sclater Millard was the author of the first bibliography of the works of Oscar Wilde as well as several books on Wilde. Millard's bibliography was instrumental in enabling Wilde's literary executor, Robert Baldwin Ross, to establish copyright on behalf of his estate.
