On the night of 24th March 1895, Mrs Robinson, a society palm-reader, agreed to see Oscar Wilde in her London flat. Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, 'Bosie', was urging him to sue the Marquis of Queensberry (Bosie's father) for criminal libel. But Wilde's friends, wary of Queensberry's power, were warning him to leave town. In Extremis reveals the strange turmoil of that night, as a man at the height of his fame turns to a complete stranger for advice about a potentially life-changing decision. In Extremis was first presented in November 2000 at the National Theatre alongside De Profundis to mark the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death.
Author
Born in 1958, Neil Bartlett has spent twenty-five years at the cutting edge of British gay culture. His ground-breaking study of Oscar Wilde, Who Was That Man? paved the way for a queer re-imagining of history ; his first novel, Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall, was voted Capital Gay Book of The Year; his second, Mr Clive and Mr Page, was nominated for the Whitbread Prize. Both have since been translated into five European languages. Listing him as one of the country's fifty most significant gay cultural figures, the Independent said "Brilliant,beautiful, mischievous; few men can match Bartlett for the breadth of his exploration of gay sensibility". He also works as a director, and in 2000 was awarded an OBE for services to the theatre. He founded his first theatre company in 1982 and is now an "independent theatre-maker and freelance director", continuing to write novels and work as an activist for gay rights. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
