{"id":637903,"date":"2026-09-27T21:10:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/637903\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:10:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:10:40","slug":"john-boyne-wilde-was-gay-he-went-to-trinity-he-went-to-england-thats-me-me-me-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/637903\/","title":{"rendered":"John Boyne: \u2018Wilde was gay, he went to Trinity, he went to England. That\u2019s me, me, me\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if Oscar Wilde <\/a>hadn\u2019t sued the marquis of Queensberry for branding him, typo aside, a \u201cposing somdomite\u201d on the infamous calling card he left at the Albemarle Club in London in 1895? What if Wilde hadn\u2019t set in motion the events that led to his imprisonment and the decline in health that hastened his death at the age of 46?<\/p>\n

In his new novel, The Weight of Angels, John Boyne <\/a>has imagined exactly this. Boyne\u2019s Oscar writes plays the real Wilde never got to write. He meets people \u2013 writers, politicians, Hollywood royals, actual royals \u2013 he never got to meet. And he eventually strives to push for gay rights, living long enough to see legislative change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one has been on my list for many years, waiting for its moment for me to think, yeah, this is the time,\u201d Boyne says. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked the idea of one moment deciding how your life goes, and I feel he had that moment that night in the Albemarle Club. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat decision to sue, instead of just saying \u2018Sod it\u2019 and waking up the next morning and getting on with his life, was the beginning of the end for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does Boyne feel an affinity with Wilde?<\/p>\n

\u201cI do, for a couple of reasons. When I was in my late teens and early 20s, and starting to write seriously and think about Irish writing, I didn\u2019t feel it with Joyce, who I could never really make head nor tail of, to be honest, and I didn\u2019t feel it with Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey<\/a>. Those war plays just didn\u2019t really do it for me. I felt it with Oscar Wilde.\u201d<\/p>\n

He lists what they have in common. \u201cWilde was gay, he went to Trinity, he went to England to study there. That\u2019s me, me, me, as well. He achieved success early in life; I did as well. I was in my 20s when I was published for the first time,\u201d Boyne says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe both went through the wringer a little bit as well. I can\u2019t compare myself to somebody of that level of genius, but I would certainly feel more connection to him than I do with other great writers in the canon.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, across a zippy 610 pages, Boyne tries to give Wilde \u201cthe second life that he didn\u2019t get\u201d. Indeed, his Oscar reaches the grand old age of 98, well past the average life expectancy of the era \u2013 \u201cThat\u2019s one of those things where I\u2019ve used a little bit of poetic licence\u201d \u2013 before dying shortly after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1953.<\/p>\n

\u2018I think I\u2019m just a writer who happens to be from Ireland. I think Oscar was as well\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0John Boyne<\/p>\n

Wilde would not have thrived in the real 1960s, he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think it would have been his era at all. I can\u2019t see Oscar with The Beatles or the Stones, or [the Look Back in Anger playwright] John Osborne or someone like that. No, I think I get him out at around the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the social-media age <\/a>\u2013 Boyne is no stranger to the vagaries of X \u2013 he thinks Wilde could have been a witty early adopter, \u201clike Stephen Fry\u201d, who played him in the 1997 biopic. \u201cThen he would have eventually said something that brought it all down about his ears,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cIf not Reading Gaol, literary jail, shall we say?\u201d<\/p>\n

His Oscar is a man of flaws. \u201cIt\u2019s not about making him perfect, not about making him a saint, because none of us are, and he certainly wasn\u2019t. And if I was to write a novel where I just polished his halo all the way through, I don\u2019t think it would be very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Oscar hurts Gus, the fictional partner Boyne invented for the book, who is \u201cjust this normal, decent person who has the measure of Oscar and is pretty much the best thing that\u2019s ever happened to him\u201d. <\/p>\n

Oscar has stabs of conscience about his treatment of the young boys he hired for sex but leaves it to Gus to vocalise disgust at the actions of his friend Andr\u00e9 Gide, the writer, a self-declared pederast. He tells Emmeline Pankhurst he will help with the suffragette cause, and he does to an extent, but \u201che\u2019s not really willing to dig in there\u201d \u2013 a sense of self-preservation kicks in.<\/p>\n

Boyne\u2019s Oscar also causes havoc for EM Forster by accelerating the publication of his gay novel Maurice so that it emerges in the 1920s, not posthumously in 1971. \u201cHe recognises the brilliance of Maurice and how important it is that a book like that should be published. But he is not willing to publish one himself. He wants someone else to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LiteraryLiterary inspiration: John Boyne with the sculpture of Oscar Wilde on Merrion Square in Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

The real Wilde \u201cprobably did\u201d advance the cause of gay rights, Boyne believes. \u201cWithin about 15 years it was looked back on as outrageous and a tragedy and the loss of somebody of real genius,\u201d he says. But he wanted his Oscar to be instrumental in bringing forward the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England.<\/p>\n

In reality, this did not begin until 1967, but the book notes an \u201cOscar\u2019s Law\u201d passed in 1953 with the aid of Winston Churchill. \u201cBy the time Oscar gets to Churchill, it\u2019s years after he\u2019s not done for Emmeline Pankhurst what he wants Churchill to do for him, which is to use his voice and help. I could be wrong, but I felt Churchill would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Royal events are used as a marker of 20th-century history throughout. \u201cI felt Oscar would be sort of mocking of those coronations but would give his left arm for a ticket as well,\u201d Boyne says. He is \u201cone of those people\u201d who reads a lot about the royals. \u201cYou can get some good comedy out of it, some good drama.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does he follow the current lot as well? \u201cOh God, yeah. I\u2019m fascinated by the current lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Weight of Angels at times leans into the playful improbability of the alternative-history genre, notably when Boyne\u2019s what-if version of Wilde\u2019s lover Bosie (aka Lord Alfred Douglas, the marquis\u2019s son) is jailed and goes on to write The Ballad of Reading Gaol \u2013 the exact same one the real Wilde wrote. <\/p>\n

But as for the life and career trajectory of his Oscar \u2013 he wins the Nobel Prize in Literature and an Academy Award and affects not to be overly fussed about either \u2013 it feels to Boyne \u201clike a reasonable concept of how he might have turned out\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the most obviously fun scenes in the book is a conversation Oscar has in 1909 with WB Yeats <\/a>and Lady Gregory in the Long Hall pub in Dublin about what it means to be an Irish writer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted Oscar to question whether he was an Irish writer or just a writer who\u2019s from Ireland. In the same way, are you a gay writer or are you just a writer who happens to be gay? <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think I\u2019m just a writer who happens to be from Ireland. I think Oscar was as well. But then he also feels, when he\u2019s talking to them, a sense that he\u2019s not included. <\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it\u2019s nice to be on the outside while not feeling that you\u2019re excluded from the inside. Maybe that\u2019s how he feels. Sometimes, in chapters like that, I\u2019m asking those questions for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyne researches as he writes because he tends to \u201cget a bit panicky\u201d if he isn\u2019t getting a first draft down. For The Weight of Angels, the research included a trip with his partner, Jake Moriarty, to the Paris hotel where Wilde (or Bosie in the book) died. <\/p>\n

\u201cNot a chore,\u201d he says. \u201cThe room itself where he died is now the bar downstairs, but we stayed in the Oscar Wilde suite, which has a lot of memorabilia on the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Boyne: ‘Everybody works differently, and good luck to them.’ Photograph Nick Bradshaw \/ The Irish Times <\/p>\n

He also spent about a year reading \u201cevery word\u201d Wilde wrote, \u201cnot just the obvious things\u201d, to help him capture his voice. The book is peppered with invented epigrams. \u201cI spent a long time just making up as many Oscar-type lines as I could and then finding ways to get them in \u2013 the best of them anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

One character interrupts Oscar mid-flow and tells him the lines are \u201cboring\u201d, not \u201cterribly witty\u201d like he thinks. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, you do want to throttle him sometimes,\u201d Boyne says. \u201cI also didn\u2019t want to have every line be a joke, because nobody can get through life like that. So there are moments of introspection, humour, selfishness, narcissism. I think anybody in that sort of position probably has all those traits. I probably have them myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a \u201cnovelist at heart\u201d, Boyne identifies Wilde\u2019s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/a>, as the work of his that means the most to him. Throughout the 18-month writing process, he was continually struck by how young Wilde was when he died, and the works that were never written as a result. \u201cI still feel young, and I\u2019m 55. I still feel like I\u2019m only starting out.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was he referring to when he said he also \u201cwent through the wringer a little bit\u201d? \u201cI was 23 or 24 when I told my parents I was gay, and obviously he didn\u2019t have that experience. He wasn\u2019t really able to say what he felt and who he was until he was in the dock.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had it easier than Wilde, a century later, but it was still \u201ca little more difficult\u201d than it is today. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t decriminalised in Ireland until I was in third year in Trinity, so my early sexual experiences, theoretically, were illegal. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen that happens, when you\u2019re 18, 19, 20, whatever, if you know what you\u2019re doing is theoretically illegal, it does mess with your head a little bit. It makes you feel that everything should be conducted in subterfuge and under cover of dark, and it\u2019s obviously not the healthiest way to begin one\u2019s romantic life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lighter side of The Weight of Angels appealed to him because he was \u201cexhausted as a writer\u201d after the two years he spent working on the four abuse-themed novellas \u2013 Water, Earth, Fire and Air \u2013 that make up The Elements, winner of two top literary prizes in France last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were all so dark, you know. Barely a joke between the four of them. By the time I finished the last one, Air, I was so drained by the sadness of those four books that I needed to start something big and broad, with jokes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t need to be so prolific. \u201cI have 28 books, and they\u2019ve sold all over the world and the royalties come all the time. So, no, I don\u2019t have to, not financially, but it\u2019s how I want to live my life. When I die there\u2019ll be a Mystery of Edwin Drood \u2013 you know, the unfinished Dickens novel \u2013 on my computer.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a writing-every-day kind of novelist who has \u201cpretty much become a one-a-year guy\u201d, Boyne is astonished by successful authors who leave long gaps between books. \u201cI don\u2019t know how they fill their days. I genuinely don\u2019t,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

He gets \u201cantsy\u201d just waiting three or four weeks for the editorial notes to come back after he\u2019s handed something in. \u201cEverybody works differently, and good luck to them. If they bring out a great book every eight years, that\u2019s great. But, for me, I need to be every year. Dickens was every year. Philip Roth was every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyne plans to spend time over the Christmas holidays and in the spring writing at his new place in Spain, just outside Malaga. He likes the sun and is \u201cdoing well\u201d so far in his bid to learn Spanish via Duolingo. <\/p>\n

He has already delivered his next novel to his publishers. \u201cIt\u2019s an out-and-out comedy. A pure comedy,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was time to lighten things up a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Weight of Angels is published by Doubleday on Thursday, October 1st<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if Oscar Wilde hadn\u2019t sued the marquis of Queensberry for branding him, typo aside, a \u201cposing somdomite\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[72799,93,61,60,10368,7652,201389,60341,24844],"class_list":["post-637903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-charles-dickens","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-john-boyne","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-philip-roth","tag-queen-elizabeth","tag-sean-o-casey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}