"The Marquess of Queensberry" is perhaps as famous for destroying one of our greatest literary geniuses as he was for helping establish the rules for modern-day boxing. The trial and two-year imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, following a series of events inspired by Wilde's romantic interest in his son, remains one of history's great tragedies. However, Linda Stratmann's riveting biography of the marquess, also known as John Sholto Douglas, paints a far more complex picture by drawing on new sources and unpublished letters. In his forties, Douglas was altered by a series of setbacks. The events of the Wilde affair - told for the first time from the marquess' perspective - were directly linked to them. Through the retelling of pivotal events from Douglas' life, including the death of his brother on the Matterhorn, his fruitless search for him, and the suicide of his father, the book reveals a well-meaning man often stricken with a grief he found hard to express, who deserves our compassion.
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