Prison Fare

Seeing as lots of people are reporting on social media how they are feeling as if they are imprisoned in their own homes, I thought I would
record Oscar Wilde's monumentally long poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, for an insight into what it is really like to be banged up with no escape in sight (unlike just hanging around at home longer than most of us would wish) - I promise to leave Mr Wilde in peace for a while now, having recorded three of his works in as many days.

This poem is a bleak one, which Wilde dedicated to a soldier who had been sentenced to hang for murder during the period in which the poet was sentenced for what will probably seem to most a very little thing - bedding Lord Alfred Douglas and rather too many rent boys. The poem addresses the awfulness of Victorian prison life and the horror of capital punishment. After all this recording, I think I need to give my throat a rest for a day or two!


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