A Conversation with Oscar Wilde

Maggi Hambling's sculpture *A Conversation with Oscar Wilde* was unveiled on 30 November 1998, the centenary of Wilde's death, on the traffic island at Adelaide Street between the National Portrait Gallery and St Martin-in-the-Fields church. It was the first public statue of an openly gay man in London and remains the country's most-visited queer public artwork. The sculpture is unusual in form. Wilde's head and shoulders rise from a green granite sarcophagus that doubles as a bench; visitors are meant to sit at his end and talk to him. His hand rests palm-up, a cigarette between his fingers (Hambling insisted on the cigarette against Westminster Council objection; it remains the only public statue in Britain of a smoking figure). The inscription — *"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"* — is from *Lady Windermere's Fan*. Wilde (1854-1900) was tried three times at the Old Bailey in 1895 on charges of gross indecency, arising from his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. His conviction and two-year sentence at Reading Gaol became the defining British sexuality case of the nineteenth century; his post-prison exile in Paris ended with his death, aged 46, in November 1900. He is buried at Père Lachaise. The statue is free, open 24/7 as public sculpture. Best in early morning before the traffic-island fills with tourists en route to Trafalgar Square. Combine with the National Portrait Gallery's Oscar Wilde portraits (free entry), five minutes' walk.