Andy Miller

I was thinking like a stand-up comedian.

You go out and you spend two years breaking America.

And then he comes back.

But if you listen to the song, what's so interesting is I think you can hear within the song the very seeds of the things which the English come to hate him for, right?

So it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

The seeds of the tragedy are there.

Stephen, when did you first read De profundis, some version thereof?

Yeah, yeah.

Why don't we hear from... You've mentioned him already, Stephen.

Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland to just tell us what De Profundis is.

Brilliant.

So I'm going to ask my colleague, John Mitchinson,

Is this a letter?

Well, when it was presented in 1905, it wasn't really a letter.

It was presented more as a kind of a philosophical meditation on Christianity and the romantic artist.

I mean, it's an uneasy letter in that it is definitely, at the beginning, he is writing, as far as we can see, he is writing to Bosie and explaining what's happened.

There are people, I think, at the time who felt it was just self-justification and he was...

pinning all the blame on.

But rereading it again, and I first read this when I was a student and actually have come back to it this time, like so many things, having lived more, this just is a more profound, more precise, more humane, more beautiful piece of work than I even remember it being.

And I was always keen on it.