The Trials of Oscar Wilde newspaper serialisation, Evening Standard, April 1960
Craig Archive MS1091/2/8

Collected by librarian Eric Dingwall, who had a lifelong interest in social attitudes towards LGBTQ+ lives, these are cuttings of a series in London’s Evening Standard following the making of a film of Wilde’s fall, starring Peter Finch. In common with the ‘psychic messages,’ the film and this press coverage are notable for depicting Wilde as a happily married heterosexual, who is tragically led astray by Lord Alfred Douglas. It is evidence that some 65 years after Wilde’s trials, and as the efforts to decriminalise consensual sex between men were gathering real momentum, the relationship could still seem so transgressive.