Reading Borough Council's bid for the site also aims to show off other aspects of the history of a town that was the burial place of King Henry I in 1136 but is arguably better known to most Britons for its big train station. Reading Gaol: The perimeter wall (right) of the now closed Victorian prison the ancient Reading Abbey is on the left. But as a result, there is something massively positive that comes out of that, that you think this is an opportunity for good.” “It’s a cliche, but it really does get in your blood, it is so dark and miserable – it feels like The Shawshank Redemption when you are in there. Local campaigners include Toby Davies, artistic director of the Rabble Theatre, which in 2016 performed a play about the trial of Oscar Wilde in the chapel of the prison. In that spirit, those seeking to convert the jail believe that Reading, too, can turn the suffering of its former prisoners to something beneficial to the public. He added, “There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.” “I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” he wrote, citing his plank bed, loathsome food, hard labour and the “dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame”. With that he was able to complete De Profundis, a lengthy letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas that included some more optimistic messages. Wilde's situation in jail eventually improved when a new prison governor granted him access to more books and to writing paper. 'I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,' Wilde wrote, citing his plank bed, loathsome food, hard labour and the 'dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame' What we get in Reading Gaol is that transition from triumph to tragedy.” “We are fascinated by his rise and by his fall, and, because of the extraordinary change in attitudes to homosexuality over the century, he also has a place in social history. “There are not many literary figures whose life as well as their work plays a part in the national story, and indeed in the international story,” he says. Gyles Brandreth, the writer, broadcaster and former MP who is honorary president of the Oscar Wilde Society, says the prison symbolises Wilde’s place in global literary, cultural and social history and needs to be saved. It recounts the fate of an inmate who was hanged in the prison grounds:Įach narrow cell in which we dwell Is a foul and dark latrine, And the fetid breath of living Death Chokes up each grated screen, And all, but Lust, is turned to dust In Humanity's machine "It's got tremendous potential," says Karen Rowland, a local councillor with special responsibility for cultural issues, who is originally from New York and thinks the location is of importance not only as an artistic and cultural asset.įor an aesthete and sybarite like Wilde, incarceration was a crushing change of fortune depicted vividly in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which he wrote after his release. Several movie stars, including the Reading-born actor Kate Winslet, support plans to open the site, as, seemingly, does the street artist Banksy, one of whose murals is said to appear on one of the prison walls. Last month a £2.6 million (€3 million) bid from the town council to buy and convert the prison into a museum and arts centre was rejected as too low by the government, which owns the property. Several movie stars, including the Reading-born actor Kate Winslet, support plans to open the site, as, seemingly, does the street artist Banksy, one of whose murals is said to appear on one of the prison walls But few have seen the prison, which is rarely opened to the public, and moves to turn it into a public space have reached an impasse. "You feel goose bumps going in there," says Matt Rodda, one of the MPs for the English town, about 60km west of London, who compares the prison – closed on health-and-safety grounds in 2013 – to a time capsule. It was here that Oscar Wilde was incarcerated for about 18 months in the late 19th century because of his homosexuality, and this was the inspiration for the Irish poet and playwright's grimly realistic portrayal of life behind bars, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. 3.3, a bare oblong room of painted brick behind a large and forbidding prison door. The metal stairway creaks and groans underfoot on the way to cell C.
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