Merlin Holland

When they sent my grandfather, Oscar Wilde, to prison in 1895, such was the scandal surrounding his prosecution that his wife and children had to leave the country and change their names.

The family, partly as a permanent rebuke to Victorian morality, has never reverted to its rightful name.

which is why I'm called Merlin Holland and not Merlin Wild, as I should be.

So they put him away for two years in grey Victorian prisons and deprived him at first of something which was almost more important to him than his freedom, pen, paper, words, and the colours of the outside world.

Like all prisoners, he was allowed to write one letter under strict supervision every three months.

But that was all.

It was not until he had been in prison for 14 months and had passed from Pentonville to Wandsworth to Reading that he was finally allowed writing materials in his cell.

At first, Oscar only had a coarsely bound notebook, but as he wrote to a friend in September 1896,

I take notes of books I read and copy lines and phrases in poets.

The mere handling of pen and ink helps me.

I cling to my notebook.

Before I had it, my brain was going in very evil circles.

Then, early in 1897, he started on this long letter to young Bosie Douglas, which has now become known as De Profundis.