This book is a beautifully written, purple-prosed account of Oscar Wilde's life from the height of his fame as an aesthete to his tragic death in a seedy Paris hotel. Reilly has succeeded in capturing the style of Wilde in his speaking and in the book's descriptive passages, and his writing gives life to people like Constance (Wilde's wife), Robbie Ross, and Bosie, and their lives seperate from Oscar are shown in interesting detail. Each character is given real depth and motivation. I normally do not like "Fictionalized Biographies," but this one is moving and well-written.

Like many people I had a pre-formed opinion of Bosie from the various books written about Oscar Wilde, this biography has considerably altered my perception of Lord Alfred Douglas. He was a very complicated character and the book gives a balanced view on all aspects of his life as well as the many facets of Douglas's personality. It deals with the many untruths which surround his relationship with Wilde and includes extracts from Douglas's poetry. I had no idea how much of this there was nor how lovely, after reading sections of it reproduced in the book I now want to read more. By the time I put the book down I felt very moved by the whole tale of this mans life. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Douglas Murray has done what I had thought impossible - completely humanized Lord Alfred Douglas and made me forgive and love him.

Up til now I had regarded Bosie as a monster of selfishness and the nemesis of my idol Oscar Wilde. So great was my distaste for him that in my book collection I would not let his work rest on the same shelf as Wilde's.

But this tour de force of a biography, exquisitely researched and crafted without prejudice or partiality, has redeemed the most maligned personality of the Fin de Siecle. Lord Douglas is neither sinner nor saint but merely a man who was his father's son, a fine poet, and a partner in a tragic friendship.

This young author is one to watch. His talent is prodigious. I have been a Wilde fanatic for thirty years, and this book shook me. I read every word hungrily, and wept when I finished the final page. Bravo, Douglas Murray! Thank you for "Bosie".

This is a fascinating freshman outing from Douglas Murray and an in-depth examination of the figure at the heart of Oscar Wilde's fall from grace in England at the end of the 19th century. The photos are illuminating, and the text is authoritative. Everybody knows the story of Bosie and Wilde, and most are aware that Lord Alfred was the offspring of the litigious aristocrat who gave boxing its Marquis of Queensbury rules. That these two daffy nobs should have combined to bring down one of the brightest bulbs in the Empire is one of literature's great tragedies. If I have a complaint about the text, it is simply that Murray appears to have convinced himself that Bosie was a great poet and sonneteer, whereas he was actually nothing of the sort. His poetry is, typically, labored and often syntactically suspect. He had a few inspired moments during his association with Wilde, and these resulted in the production of a handful of modestly successful works, including his most famous, 'Two Loves,' with the line about 'the love that dare not speak its name.' Otherwise, Bosie dropped out of the limelight in the wake of Wilde's death, only to surface occasionally throughout the first half of the 20th Century, when his name was attached to various court actions for libel, culminating in his being sentenced to jail for six months in the '20s. It all makes for a fascinating study in self-flagellation. Douglas may have been a footnote character, but sometimes the footnotes are needed to illuminate the primary text. In this case, it is his relationship to Wilde that guarantees his footnote status and which, for better or worse, defined his life for the forty-five years he survived his better half.