Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

"The Oscar Wilde Murders" -- Gyles Brandreth's first foray into crime fiction -- features celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur Oscar Wilde whose unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian society, from society drawing rooms and the bohemian demi-monde to the underclass, offers him a unique opportunity to investigate a series of brutal murders. Set against the exotic background of fin-de-siecle London, Paris, Oxford and Edinburgh, "The Oscar Wilde Murders" is the first in a series of classic English murder mysteries in the tradition of Conan Doyle and Dorothy L Sayers. For Gyles Brandreth, diarist, bestselling biographer and celebrated Radio 4 contributor, "The Oscar Wilde Murders" is a story he has always wanted to write -- and is uniquely placed to tell. His own connections to Oscar Wilde go back to his father, who knew Wilde's close friend and confidante Robert Sherard and Lord Alfred Douglas, and to his own days at Bedales School where he was not only a friend of Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, but also recorded a series of interviews about Wilde with JH Badley, the school's founder and a close friend of Wilde's.