Simon Russell Beale

Written during his time in Reading Gaol, De Profundis is Oscar Wilde’s moving letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde led to the poet’s imprisonment. Here Wilde repudiates Lord Alfred and reflects on his ordeal, acknowledging how...

To be or not to be… Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… O for a Muse of Fire… The quality of mercy is not strained… This sceptred isle… Once more unto the breach dear friends… Many of Shakespeare’s greatest and best-loved speeches are brought together...

The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and...

Today Byron is regarded as the ultimate romantic – a rebel, a Casanova and a man of intense, brooding passion. He was the most famous literary man of his time, and his poetry, endlessly witty and often insightful, was immensely popular and hugely...

The remarkable and tragic story of Oscar Wilde, legendary wit and conversationalist, author of perhaps the most perfect comedy in the English language, yet seemingly doomed by his own flawed temperament to suffer at the hands of a censorious and...