It’s not even really winter yet and I’m not coping. Spending all my spare time swaddled in bed with the Gray boys – Dorian and Earl. Oscar Wilde can weave more wit into a single sentence than most of us will manage in a lifetime. I don’t think people swoon any more these days, but if they did this intoxicating prose would be enough to set off a fit of the vapours. And for all its arcane fashion and gothic melodrama, there are some very modern ideas about art and morality at play in Dorian Gray. It’s a book that still prescient in today’s cultural tug-of-war between hedonism and puritanism. More tea, please…
Clare Fletcher 