Location
The Lumley Library, The View, Lincoln's Inn, London
Event type
Alumni
Date
26 May 2026
Time
7-9pm
You are invited to save the date for a book talk with Merlin Holland (1964), biographer and grandchild of famous poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. The talk will take place at the Lumley Library in the Royal College of Surgeons, London at 7pm on Tuesday 26 May.
Europa Editions describes Merlin Holland’s newest book, due to be released on the 7 April, as ‘one of the most important works on Wilde in over fifty years’.
Merlin will be introduced by Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author and Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen. The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A, a drinks reception and an opportunity for book signings.
Timings: 7-8pm: Talk and Q&A. 8-9pm: Drinks reception.
Location: The Lumley Library in the Royal College of Surgeons, 38-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3PE (closest tube stop is Holborn).
Tickets will cost £16pp (or £12pp for matriculants after 2018). Alumni are invited to bring one guest.
Bookings will open soon. For any questions in the meantime, please email the Alumni Office.
Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde, is an author living in France. For the last forty years he has been researching his grandfather’s life and works, and writes, lectures, and broadcasts regularly on the subject in English, French, and German. His publications include Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first complete, verbatim record of the libel trial which ultimately brought Wilde to ruin, and The Wilde Album, a pictorial biography of Oscar Wilde. He is also the co-editor of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde as well as the editor of an abridged and commentated version of Oscar’s letters, Oscar Wilde: a Life in Letters. After Oscar’s conviction in 1895, his wife, Constance, and their two sons were forced to move abroad and change their name to Holland. The family has never reverted to the name Wilde.
See a recent interview with Vanity Fair here.
