Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century

by Philip Hoare

Documents the case in which dancer Maud Allan brought action against a right-wing MP for libellous remarks concerning her performance of Wilde's Salome

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Literature, LGBT, True Crime, Politics

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Philip Hoare is an English writer, especially of history and biography. He instigated the Moby Dick Big Read project. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton and Leverhulme artist-in-residence at the Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2011.

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hedline, London, 1918: "The Cult of the Clitoris" -- Hmm, whaaat? Most readers had never heard of the clit; an old duffer burped, "Who's this Greek chap Clitoris, they're all talking about?" Radical right-wing MP, Noel Billing, ran the hedline (& story) in his newspaper, claiming that 47,000 Brit perverts were listed in a German Black Book, and were conspiring to keep Brit from winning W1, along w German-born Jews who also lived in the UK. Billing had burst a vessel because the beautiful American dancer, Maude Allan (1873-1956), who'd been performing her Salome "dance" for a dozen years around the world -- she was as famous as Loie Fuller & Isadora Duncan -- was planning to expand her career and appear in Wilde's play, "Salome," w the help of drama critic J.T. Grein, who also produced new plays. Noel Billing suggested that Maude Allan was a lewd woman and lesbian. Only muff divers, he implied, knew how to give other women pleasure. And why was she always with the PMs wife Margot Asquith, surely among the 47,000 in the secret Black Book. (It never existed: it was fake news, which gives this vastly entertaining - and erudite - slice of unknown history a topicality).

Maude certainly had some posh lovers. Sticking to facts at hand, author Hoare can only refer to some of her social outings. She was, however, haunted by the execution of her brother who murdered 2 women in a Baptist Church in San Francisco, which he attended -- personal bio later introduced in the most frivolous trial ever held.....

Sex, drugs, history (W1), sociology, sex, political manipulation, and a court-room trial will keep you glued to this rare, mostly unknown story, which seems like a Monty Python/ Carry On comedy until lives are ruined. Maude Allan unwisely sued MP Noel Billing for libel. We've been here before! Invoking the name of Wilde, who'd died 20 years earlier, Billing said the play (which Allan performed once) was about "the physical orgasm" and animal lust. The production was part of a German conspiracy to corrupt Brits and lose the war, he added. War hysteria reigned ! Billing fueled homophobia & anti-semitism.

In the 19-teens there was plenty of worldliness in London; it just didnt "pop" w the 20s, postwar. London had seen Nancy Cunard in men's clothes, Bakst's designs for the Russian Ballet, Nijinsky's narcissistic sexuality, Beardsley's illustrations, Cubism, Vorticism, the author reports, and, further there was an "illicitness of desire" in clubs and private rooms - that added to the excitement. Billing concocted the 47,000 (fake names) and sought to save British morality w Maude Allan /Oscar Wilde as figures who could not be endured. He smeared Maude with leaks about her long dead brother, and called her a genetically sick performer for her interest in the beheaded John the Baptist. The middle-classes, per usual, cheered him.

Early summer, 1918, last months of a preposterous war, Maude's libel suit went to trial. Allan (1873-1956) is actually a minor player in a big all-star cast. Lord Alfred Douglas was a star witness for Billing. The little prick, who'd married briefly, said OW was a moral and sexual pervert. "He had a diabolical influence on everyone he met. He was the greatest force of evil...he was the agent of the devil in every possible way..." Most healthy people would be "disgusted" by OWs "Salome." Later in the trial he began shouting, waving his arms and had to be ejected while the gallery applauded him.

The trial, writes Hoare, became a medieval inquisition w Maude Allan as a modern witch. Maude lost the libel suit. Billing went on to other mishmash ventures. Critic Grein had a breakdown and lost his job. Maude's career vaporized, but she was helped by Friends in High Places, it seems. The author wonders, discreetly, if Maude had been set up by the government to take down or embarrass Billing. Was she part of a political conspiracy -- had she been encouraged to sue for libel?

This saga is, yes, "outrageous," as the title says. By the 40s, Allan was in LA working briefly for the Douglas Aircraft Company. UCLA didnt need her on the performing arts staff. C 1912 Maude Allan statuettes had been sold in Bond Street, her Salome sandals and costume jewelry were copied for society ladies. Her performance was said to be so hypnotic that many viewers insisted she danced naked. In sum, she was an Edwardian sex symbol. She died in obscurity in Los Angeles.

I keep thinking: this trial could only have happened in Britain.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book and Philip Hoare is the perfect author to bring out the relevance of the past to the present without actually doing so (this sparing the reader the belaboured moralising and self satisfied posturing indulged by so many mediocre writers). That this tale of self publicising politicians, journalists and cast of very unattractive hangers on who without a trace of evidence demolished the reputations of innocent people smearing them as traitors and then did the same to anyone who questioned them - its relevance as one of the first great conspiracy hysteria's is all to apparent today - even more so then when Philip Hoare wrote it. There is a fascination with the way this story became a grand guignol tale but like all conspiracy tales of idiotic behavior they don't seem as funny as they used to. Seeing so many parts of the world (as of February 2023 when this review was written though the book was read the first time twenty years ago) held in thrall by men who use their resources to spout absurd lies and stir up fear and hatred it is impossible to view what happened in London in 1918 as but the beginning of the invidious culture wars that are destroying the concept of free debate and discussion.

But back to the book - it is a wonderful tale of an incredible time and says a lot about the hidden passions and fears of many in the UK in the early 20th century. For all those deluded people who try to find some good in Lord Alfred Douglas this episode is only one, and by no means the worst, episode in his tawdry post Wilde life. The only thing to be said in Bosie's defence is that Wilde, while he may never have been able to change Bosie, did nothing to discourage any of his appalling habits and characteristics and he often encouraged them. Bosie as an adult monster is simply Bosie the young man grown up and ugly.

A book of far greater importance and interest then you might think. Highly recommended.

[Don Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this slice of history from the early twentieth century interesting on many levels. There are quirky events that occur throughout time, and this certainly qualifies as one of them. I spent the better part of a Saturday starting and finishing this book.

This is a story that builds over several decades, culminating in a trial that seems to be part witch hunt, part circus. Oscar Wilde, despite being dead for fifteen years, is accused both directly and indirectly throughout the court proceedings. Noel Pemberton Billing printed an article that publicly trashed actress Maud Allen, who played the part of Salome in an Oscar Wilde play. She sued Billing, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Author Philip Hoare has done an outstanding job of thoroughly researching this subject and then presenting it in a way that captivates the reader. The first few chapters concern the main players in the court case, and Mr. Hoare paints detailed pictures of everyone involved. Once the courtroom drama is reached, readers do not have to endure the normal boring transcripts where we see the person’s name and what was said. The author provides us with most of the dialogue and continues to present the drama in story form, thus ensuring that the book remains interesting.

Politics and WWI also figure heavily into this story, and Mr. Hoare makes sure we are provided with all the facts of the accusations, sniping, and outright lies. It is amazing to see that what we might consider ho-hum today was considered vile and trashy 100 years ago. I was totally unaware of this case, and thus was able to experience it as if I had been in the courtroom. This is a fantastic read and I highly recommend it. Five stars.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noel Pemberton Billing was a right-wing populist who held much wider influence that you would have thought possible in WWI era London. He was obsessed by the decadence of the upper classes and the prospect that there might be a peace deal struck with Germany. (Well, judging from this book there was a pretty decadent set among the aristos and that possible peace deal was under review.) To stir things up he created a spurious account of a Black Book, a list compiled by Germany that named 47,000 British citizens who could be blackmailed for sexual perversity. His final target was the American dancer Maud Allan and a proposed production of Oscar Wilde's stilled banned Salome. What landed him in court was the libelous assertion that The Cult of the Clitoris was working its evil influence through the production. (Introducing the word "clitoris" to the newspaper-reading public of 1918 might have been his most notable accomplishment.)

I will not fall into the trap of making contemporary comparisons to this book, but one of Billing's more successful talking points was the proposed incarceration of all enemy nationals in Great Britain. Failing that, he suggested they be made to wear patches on their clothing identifying their country of origin.

[Dottie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The fear of decadence is the fear - and fascination - of the other. It is a fantasy fear of letting go, of the abandonment of principle. In that it is an essentially middle-class fear, for the upper classes with their privilege - literally, private law - were answerable to no one, while the working class were both expendable and by trdaition prone to vice. Billing represented the voice of the outraged British middle class, the defining voice of our era, the voice that calls for punitive measures against anything that threatens its own status quo. In the history of the Billing affair is reflected the sway of middle-class sensibility, and all the safety, reason, and stability that it represents. On the other side is chaos, libertinism, vice, danger and the unknown. and the unknown will always remain so to those who do not choose to explore it."

Sums things up nicely, I believe. The book redeemed itself somewhat in the end and so I wound up appreciating it more than I might have done -- not for e veryone as it's a bit uneven in many regards but I overlooked that as I got to the final bits.

[Amolhavoc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Records an obscure, bizarre, and rather unsavoury episode in British wartime history. It's unpleasantly prescient in its portrayal of British society's turn towards social intolerance and the far right during a time of national crisis, not least because Philip Hoare actually wrote it over twenty years ago.

I'm giving this one 4 rounded up from 3.5. I didn't find it an especially easy read, partly because the story is bewilderingly labyrinthine (in common with most of the participants, I largely lost track of what the trial was actually about on several occasions), and partly because the text of the Duckworth Overlook 2011 edition is really, really small. Neither of these are Hoare's fault, but having read some of his more recent stuff I do feel that he was limbering up a bit in terms of structure and narrative when he wrote this back in 1997. These quibbles notwithstanding, it's still definitely worth a read.

[M2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilde's Last Stand tells the story of McCarthy-like British MP, Noel Billing, who asserted that 47,000 members of the British establishment were sex perverts under threat of blackmail from the Germans at the end of WWI. This bizarre, nearly forgotten tale pits aesthetes against admirals as they seem to vie for the soul of an empire.

[Manray9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of an era of "hysteria, homophobia, and paranoia." Gee, it sounds just like the USA in 2012! Just stir in the threat of sharia, add a hefty dash of racism, and mix in some firearms and it would be a cinch.

[Edward Canade · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book but it took me a while to get through it although I don't know exactly why. I read this along with Erik Larson's, "The Splendid and the Vile." This is a much shorter book, half the number of pages but took me just as long to read it. I'm getting older so it may be that my ability to comprehend the two different writing styles just worked better with Erik's. But I really like the fact that happenstance brought both books into my possession at the same time as they both deal mainly with London, but this one by Philip Hoare covered for the most part, 1917-1918 and the other 1940-1941. Each book takes place during a major world war. They are way different books but both authors ended their books with a similar literary devise, adding brief synopsises of what happened in the lives of each of the main characters in the ensuing years, beyond the period of the substantive focus of their books.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The echoes of Trump-beta version in wartime England are so pervasive in this book. Based on a trial to decide whether or not a performance of Oscar Wilde’s Salome is a secret (German-devised) ‘cult of the clitoris’ meant to undermine English war efforts…and the verdict was YES, indeed, there was a secret plot of 47,000 gays in London spying for the Germans. Of course there’s a complex play of social factors that play into this verdict… and 100 years later I can honestly say America would absolutely come to the same verdict (and we’re not even at war, yet).

[Cecilia Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Difficult

I wanted so badly to enjoy this book but found it laborious to read. What might usually take 2 maybe 3 days of a few hours each day to complete took weeks. I would put it down and pick up another book and then come back to it. Sadly, if I have started a book I feel obligated to finish it. Yes, I realize I'm throwing time away that I could be using g on a hobby or book I do enjoy. If you are looking for a book on Oscar Wilde this is not the book for you. It is on the years following the death of Wilde and the slow grinding of WW 1 and British society decline. If you want a book about the Maud Allan case and trial against Noel Pemberton Billing and the Justice on the case, Justice Darling, this is the book for you. This is more about Billings that Wilde. Perhaps I'm just a simpleton but the author seems to out of his way to use words that you would be advised to keep a dictionary nearby.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept going back and forth on how to rate this book... On the one hand, the topic was fascinating, and well researched. On the other hand, the author's prose is hard to follow, and muddled the absolutely fascinating information. Whenever he was focusing on the history of just one person or one event, the story was captivating. Whenever he tried to explain the (admittedly tangled) relationships between the people, it was difficult to follow. I still don't understand the militaristic conspiracy behind the trial, and who was set to gain from it. I was wishing at one point for a "cast of characters" guide, as I kept having to look up the individual people described in the book.

[TC · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me twenty years to finish—literally. I bought it in June 1999, tried reading it several times over the decades, and finally finished it from beginning to end after being determined to do so. Even then it still took me four months. Why? It’s a dreadfully written book that assumes you are already an expert on post-Edwardian London and all its personalities. Every paragraph introduces a new name or five, without introducing who they are, because it is assumed you already know exactly who these once-important people were. I bought the book in 1999 because I was on a Wilde kick, and had fresh in my mind the circumstances of his trials and downfall. In fact, the connection to Wilde’s downfall and the remnants of his world is definitely an important part of this story. But realizing that requires a lot of digging, and it doesn’t really become clear until half-way through the book, and only if you’ve been paying attention and remember the book’s title.

Ostensibly, it’s about a proto-fascist/futurist name Noel Pemberton-Billing, a “true English eccentric" who held political office, ran a newspaper, built airplanes (back when they were called aeorplanes), and hated the Hun who he saw as literally sodomizing the English, undermining the resolve and morale of the Empire during the final days of The Great War with Berlin-imported decadence and debauchery. Using that most English way of spreading ideas—the baiting in print of a libelous accusation to get yourself sued, so you can use the court as your soapbox—he accused a Canadian-American stage actress of presiding over what he called “The Cult of the Clitoris” by performing in the title role of a private performance of Wilde’s Salome. Having thus provoked her ire, he used the ensuing court case to rant endlessly about a supposed German book of “the 47,000,” high-ranking members of British society who were Teutonically-infected perverts, one and all, engaging in God-knows-what, while the brave and wholesome soldiers were off dying in the trenches for their King. Pemberton-Billing's goal in this was to stir up a sense of moral outrage in the middle classes, undermine the ruling classes, and affect a soft-revolution of sorts, replacing the old guard and their conservative approaches with a more aggressive, nationalistic, and futuristic thinking—a model followed with spectacular effect a generation later elsewhere in Europe, as we know.

This is, in fact, fascinating stuff. It first disabuses the reader of any romantic notions that the past was somehow populated by more articulate, kinder, and nobler people. As it turns out, there were demagogues then, too. It is also a fine study in the British class system, as it was only the upper class we were to believe had the time and the means to be properly debauched. The same notion is alive today, even in less class-conscious societies: producerism may be growing in popularity, but it turns out it’s nothing new. And this shows us some of the roots of fascism; that these ideas didn’t just spring into being overnight, and they weren’t born out of random outrages. There was a deliberateness to them that made them seductive the middle class who saw themselves increasingly as pawns in a war fought to protect the interests of modern Neros and Caligulas.

And that is the real value of this book. Beneath the impenetrable wall of name-dropping, and the meandering thick prose that buries what could have been a gripping courtroom farce (complete with absolutely comedic skulduggery on the part both Pemberton-Billing and his mad cohorts, and the Crown), is the notion that this is not such an old story after all, with resonances to today more than ever. Indeed, more than a tie to the past of Wilde, it seems a prescient prediction of the present.

The meat of this material would make a great and enlightening costume drama movie. But unfortunately this book makes for as dry a read as if I was paging through the Encyclopedia Brittanica in the drafty dimly lit basement of a dusty library. On the plus side, if you take the time to look up even a third of the names you come across, as I did, you too can become an amateur expert on the who’s-who of post-Edwardian England. It only took me twenty years.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book concerns the influence of Oscar Wilde's "decadent" reputation on the World War I generation. Wilde's two "boys" - Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas and Robert "Robbie" Baldwin Ross - are middle aged in 1918, and feuding away. Bosie has become Catholic and virulently anti-homosexual. Robbie, Wilde's literary executor, has become a notable literary patron and lionized by Prime Minister and Lady Asquith and other "Souls" and sons of "Souls", political and artistic. His sexuality is an "open secret". The police bother him only when Bosie or another active crusader against immorality reports his activities. [Bosie apparently can't stand that anyone with power and influence likes Robbie and not him. He also seems conflicted about his past with Wilde - he says he hates Wilde, but acts as though he was the only person who really knew him. Wilde was his only claim to fame, it seems - and he hates Ross because Ross has the keys to Wilde's literary estate.]

Part of that literary estate was Wilde's play about Salome and John the Baptist. It had not been produced in England, and Maud Allan, who played the role of Salome in Berlin, wanted to play it. The righteous politicians were furious. Not only was the playwright a decadent homosexual, but since louche Berlin liked it - and Berlin is the enemy, killing all the splendid British chaps - showing "Salome" would endanger the war effort. All those impressionable young people - ruined on purpose by the enemy and the deviant traitors like Maud Allan and Robert Ross. - and Herbert and Margot Asquith, the Tennants, those Souls and Bloomsbury types in government. Treachery in high places indeed! The war had been dragging badly, but the Germans were approaching Paris. It seemed that the Hun might win. Quiet peace feelers from both sides were almost touching. But M.P. Noel Pemberton Billing, right-wing self appointed guardian of family values, will sound the trumpet against all those perverts and Jew-bankers and clean-living Britons will flush them out of office (and Billing in, of course) and win the victory.

So, it's 1917-18 and Wilde's "Salome" has become the tinder in the war between Wilde's old loves, between the decadent aliens [read German spies and Jewish bankers in England] and the pure in heart and blood British, between the old mores of the 19th century and the new, relaxed mores of the 20th; between the young "flappers" [and that's was in Billing's publication in 1917] who should go home to their parents' care instead of drug themselves on cocaine and dancing in London's nightclubs. Maud Allan was no better than Mata Hari, according to Billing and other proto-Fascists or nationalist saviours of Britain. She was an erotic dancer who made her fame in Berlin, so she must be, like Mata Hari, a German spy. A femme fatale. A "vampire" woman who lured men to perdition. ["Vamp" or "vampire" was another word used before the 1920's].

The book is interesting in places; hard to read in others. Faintly humourous at times. Mr. Hoare is not on the side of the extreme rights and the extreme straights. One inaccuracy - minor perhaps, but galling to me because I would have thought an Englishman would at least check the history of one of its former colonies - is that Hoare said Robert Baldwin, Robbie Ross's grandfather, was Governor-General of Canada. Robert Baldwin was not Governor General but c0-Premier of Canada (at that time covering present day southern Ontario and southern Quebec) with Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine in 1848. [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca...] Robert Baldwin was quite a name in Canadian history ["the Father of Responsible Government"], so he was not a petty little politician.

[Michael Bully · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couldn't quite give this book 5 stars. But very nearly. The writer's wide historical reference points from the 1890's onward, particularly in looking at, decadence, homosexuality, sexual behaviour generally, drug taking, class differences, are quite extensive and well researched.
In basic terms what started as a libel trial involving American dancer Maude Allen launching an action against Noel Pemberton -Billing MP and newspaper editor, after he described her interpretation of' Salome' as the 'dance of the Clitrois' transformed into what we would now call a moral panic. Pemberton- Billing and his supporters announced that there was a black book in existence with the names of some 47,000 individuals involved in a conspiracy to ensure that Britain lost World War 1. The trial opened in June 1918, just as the German breakthrough on the Western Front was reaching its height. Supporting Maud Allen was Oscar Wilde's friend and literary executor Robbie Ross. Supporting Pemberton-Billing was Lord Alfred Douglas-'Bosie' - Wilde's former lover. The court room drama and its repercussions are depicted well. And in any case the story is so sensational in its own right. An incredible read.
A few slight reservations. The book's title had generated some criticism. It must be stressed that this is about Wilde's posthumous reputation. Also there are times when the author is probably too harsh on Pemberton-Billing's supporters. Many of them had suffered a great deal, and statistically a proportion would have lost loved ones in the War. Believing nonsense about 47,000 supporters of the enemy, entrenched in the British establishment may have offered some perverse comfort. The author does show that by September 1918 the panic about the 47,000 started to reduce as the possibility of a German defeat became more likely.
The book ends by showing that the cultural decadence that right wing luminaries such as Pemberton- Billing were so incensed by could start to connect with the emerging Fascism. Perhaps more could have been made of this ? But overall a fascinating read.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the tale of a libel trial in the middle of 1918 that captivated England so much that they briefly forgot to pay attention to all the war news.

There were these proto-fascists looking for ways to stamp out what they believed to be decadent and immoral ways intruding upon their ultra-conservative lifestyles. (Stop me if that sounds familiar.) Oscar Wilde had written a play before he died, Salome, which I only knew of because it was the basis of the Richard Strauss opera of the same name with which I fell in love a few years back. In it, the titular character did an erotic dance which ended with her kissing the beheaded noggin of John the Baptist.

One Maud Allen made a career out of dancing that dance, and for a while she was one of the biggest stars in England. She was signed up to do the play in London, but the bad guys published a newspaper article under the heading "The Cult of the Clitoris," which included a word virtually nobody at the time had ever heard. The implication was that all the women involved were lesbians.

Meanwhile, there was talk of a black book made up by the Germans listing 47,000 English people who could easily be blackmailed, mostly because they were guilty of homosexual acts. The fascists wanted this to come out in the open, in order to topple Lloyd George's government. George, or people in his camp, encouraged Allen to sue the bad guy (his last name was Billing but I can't remember his first name and I can't easily find it in the Kindle copy of the book) for libel. Somehow, a judge whose last name was Darling and who fancied himself a comedian wound up in charge of the trial.

Hoare does a great job of setting the scene, giving us background on all the characters, and detailing the actual trial. It's amazing how close England came to fascism at the end of WWI. It seems authoritarianism is always ready to ruin people's lives.

[Heep · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book provides a vivid portrait of Britain set to collapse at the Great War's end. It is not the story we are usually told or the myth presented for countless Remembrance Days. This book's version rings true and it stands to reason. The war was fought for dubious if any reasons, and it was led by an English upperclass that was both incompetent and largely indifferent to the horror inflicted on its youth.
Hoare argues that Britain's leadership was motivated, at least in part, by a belief that conflict would purify the nation - cleansing it of decadence and licentiousness. The Billing's trial of 1918 is questionable evidence for this assertion. A libel case arising from Maude Allen's risque portrayal of Salome expanded into an expose of ruling class decadence and complicity. The proceedings afforded abundant opportunity for moral outrage about vice and sex, but was ultimately a bizarre and largely abberent event. By the 1920s, the social life of London was very much back to usual.
The war does not neatly fit into dialectic analysis with prudish authority ranged against progressive morality. The book demonstrates only to well that affinities and alliances crossed boundaries of class, lifestyle and personal belief. In weird ways, and not least because the trial was poorly adjudicated and litigated, unexpected interests momentarily coalesced only to splinter within weeks.
In all this, one glimpses a blueprint of a post-war period where people try to understand the emerging economic and social order while stumbling toward the even greater calamity of WWII.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some things are timeless. The trial for British aeronautic pioneer Pemberton Billing for slander against Maud Allan (and implicitly, her associates) was an outcropping of the perpetual quest of the political right to use moral outrage as a tool to whip their followers into a froth. Apart from being a hypocrite -- Billing's mistress appeared as a character witness, with his wife in the courtroom -- Billing was also an aspiring Fascist and his magazine, The Vigilante, one of the premier voices of xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-Semitism during the first World War. The book's title refers to the lavender specter of Wilde lingering from better days and to Ms. Allan's notoriety for her role as Wilde's Salome. Hoare uses the trial to recreate an entire era, populated by amazing characters, testifying for both the defense and the prosecution, in a moment between fin de siècle decadence and post-war hedonism, when John Bull in his most moral avatar ran amok, wrecking lives and destroying reputations. Maud Allan is a fascinating figure in her own right, possibly a mistress to royalty and to the wife of a prime minister, sister of a notorious San Francisco murderer, and a mostly forgotten symbol of an era.

[Thomas Mackan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't "not" read this book. I didn't quite finish it myself. It's a massive undertaking by a first rate journalist whose research of this subject is mammoth in scope, in detail, in understanding. The effect of Oscar Wilde on the evolution of society morally, politically, culturally in the tumultuous years spanning the 19th and 20th centuries is laid out with a barely concealed sense of accomplishment and enjoyment. Words, detail and organization are the brickwork of the tome. I got to the ante-penultimate chapters however, quite exhausted, and with what I hope was enough understanding of the crises involved and felt I could take no more. Relevance was bothering me. I seriously felt that the scandal of the Billings trial was not affecting the work already done in setting the scene, and as an octogenarian who has lived most of the 20th century in the wash of the events, I left it... rather I leave it, to you. Enjoy some fine documentary writing.

[Simon Pitfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating and timely account of a British proto-fascist and his attempt to exploit concerns about morality to discredit the government and launch a movement to take power in the final days of World War I. The parallels between Pemberton-Billing and Farage are striking even down to the German wives of these xenophobes.

Unfortunately this book lacks the clarity of some of Philip Hoare's other work and frankly the positions and machinations of the various parties to the trial were so convoluted as to make them hard to understand and difficult to follow. Consequently this was a tougher and less pleasant read.

[Eugenea Pollock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a great deal of social history surrounding the period of WWI in Great Britain, and "the most outrageous trial of the century" was indeed outrageous. But I did not enjoy the author's literary writing style. Though the facts demanded that I finish the book, it was, paradoxically, almost dull to read--as if I were slogging through molasses.

[Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too long and drawn out. The author assumes the reader has an extensive knowledge of Victorian-Edwardian English society and other public persona, as well as a vocabulary bordering on that of an Oxford dictionary. He dropped names without supporting biographical information and used obscure words which only an astute linguist would be familiar. Very disappointing.

[Herb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Complicated story involving Oscar Wilde's salacious play, "Salome", a lightly-clad infamous dancer, a self-appointed moral enforcer, and the resultant libel trial that captivated London during WWI. Rampant homosexuality, rumors of German spies and general "decadence" make the story all the more interesting. Very detailed; a fun read.

[Asha Stark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a chore to read in all honestly. It was extremely interesting, don't get me wrong, and I did learn quite a bit; But it did take a lot of effort which was a shame.

[Giu Giu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was as Oscar had never died; as if he had survived to cast a world-weary, cynical eye over the war, and beyond.

[Alita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting time in history but not involving enough to read more than a bit at a time...mostly read before bed....definitely did not keep me up.

[Luke Sheldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was read for my Remembering World War One essay and this was so interesting!

[E. Ozols]

This book has been sitting untouched on my nightstand for a couple years now I think. The time has come to admit that I'm just never going to actually read any more of it.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Most outrageous trial of the century was an outrage to read. I trudged on and was deeply relieved when I reached the last page of the book.

[Sharon Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

First World War Gay Blackmail Hysteria

In January 1918, the Imperialist, a far-right-wing polemical newspaper published by the MP Noel Pemberton Billing, made the startling allegation that a German prince had a black book which named 47,000 members of the British establishment as "sexual perverts" (read: homosexuals), ripe for ongoing blackmail by Germany. At this time Britain seemed to be losing the war and many believed the prevailing social "decadence" to be the cause; Germany's blackmailing of homosexuals, if true, would deliver a fatal, weakening, blow to the country's war effort.

Billing was a clever campaigner. To draw even more attention to his scare-mongering, he published a libel of the exotic dancer, Maud Allan, alleging she was a figurehead of the "Cult of the Clitoris" - adding a lesbian overtone to the homophobic campaign. The socially well-connected Allan had become famous for her performance of an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play, Salome. This play had long caused controversy and brought the ghost of Oscar Wilde (whose trial was only 23 years in the past) to public consciousness. Maud Allan and her theatre manager sued Pemberton Billing, who conducted his own defence. It was a sensational trial, played to a packed gallery. Billing eventually won and Maud Allan's career never recovered.

But, there's more! Allan's past held a dark secret: born in America, she had a brother, once a fine upstanding lad, who became mentally disturbed and was finally convicted of the murder of two women, with the suggestion that he and the rest of the family possibly suffered from an hereditary type of mental affliction. This would soon tell against Allan.

In addition, two men with "history" - Robert Ross and Lord Alfred Douglas - became involved. Ross was one of Wilde's most faithful friends and Douglas his former lover. the pair were sworn enemies, with Douglas constantly trying to make Ross's life a misery. Douglas had turned viciously against Wilde's memory and even against homosexuality, despite his past and Billings' newspaper, now called the Vigilante, made use of his homophobic rants. Ross and Douglas seemed to be in the background to much of the trial, though, with all the detailed passages in the book, it becomes hard to recall and hard to trace exactly why. The index isn't much help here, either.

This brings up, for me, one of the real difficulties of the book: its denseness! It is absolutely packed with almost gossipy details about prominent people of the time - H.H. Asquith, the former Liberal prime minister, and his social circle, in particular. But the prose style could be improved as could the presentation and organisation of information. However, it is excellent reading for anyone interested in wartime/postwar Britain and the hysteria surrounding homosexuality in those days.