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I remember my father spluttering with outrage at the film made with Peter Finch in the title role of The Trials of Oscar Wilde: not at the justice or cruelty of the eventual sentence, but the idea that anyone should have thought Wilde innocent or undeserving of his punishment.
The power of The Ballad [of Reading Gaol] is not its propagandistic or prison-reformist message . . . but in its implicit recognition of the frailty and imperfectibility [sic] of man.
Educated and intelligent people survive surprisingly well as prisoners, perhaps by detaching themselves from their predicament and observing everything around them in a deliberately unemotional way: but their surprising resilience does not prevent my nightmare recurring. . . . Murder may be the worst of crimes in the eyes of the law, but murderers are often not the worst of criminals.
Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels)
The New Criterion 20:10 (10 Jun 02)
Daniels, a psychiatric doctor born London 1949, works at an inner city hospital and a prison in UK.
Oscar Wilde (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills)
1854-1900 (Photograph 1890)