
Location: Chester Cathedral June 2017 Mr Brandreth very kindly autographed the Reading Gaol and Candlelight Murders.
Location: Chester Cathedral June 2017 Mr Brandreth very kindly autographed the Reading Gaol and Candlelight Murders.
Now we have a brave new voice in the world with the new French President, it is time to add a new post.
Did you know that both Oscar Wilde and Arthur Ransome had connections with France?
Wilde had sympathies with the Revolutionaries who had a vision of a better, more egalitarian society and he expressed Republican sympathies in his poetry.
Fluent in French, having spent a long time in France as a youth, he was widely read in French literature.
When Arthur Ransome undertook his commission to write Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study he travelled to France to meet the French poet Paul Fort, an important voice in the Symboliste movement, among others.
Ransome supported the Russian Revolutionaries and like Wilde, had sympathy with their aims of a better, fairer society. Wilde’s poetry must surely have struck a chord with him along with the much-envied French society of the early nineteenth century.
Let us hope M. Macron succeeds to uphold the principles of the Revolution in this increasingly divisive and divided world.
Vive la France!