OSCAR WILDE

unwavering commitment to witty and eloquent prose is something few writers dare dream of, let alone achieve. Oscar Wilde did just that, and then – as if being the finest writer of his time wasn’t enough – matched it with an equal level of extravagance in his dressing. A f laneur of the highest order, the Victorian writer was precisely the sort of urbane, sophisticated aesthete Baudelaire wrote about in Les Fleurs du Mal: he reportedly walked around London in a billowing fur coat and cravat, gaily tapping his way along the streets of Mayfair with his gold-headed ivory cane and soaking in the city’s richest splendours, only to invoke the same scenes later on in his literature. His