Playwright’s grandson reveals letter that tells of deep loathing felt for Wilde by lawyer in libel trial
He was the brilliant lawyer whose brutal 1895 cross-examination of Oscar Wilde in one of the most famous trials in British history led to the Irish dramatist’s imprisonment for homosexuality, and to his ultimate ruin. Now a previously unpublished letter reveals that Sir Edward Carson’s attack on Wilde in the Old Bailey was partly personal – a loathing that went beyond his job in defending the Marquess of Queensberry in the ill-fated libel case.
Long after Carson’s death in 1935, the son of one of his friends confided in a 1950 letter: “I was never able to get Carson to admit that Wilde possessed any ability at all. ‘Ah,’ he used to say angrily, ‘he was a charlatan.’”
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