Скачать или смотреть A Chat With Don Mead - The Oscar Wilde Society

Don Mead has been a member of the Oscar Wilde Society for around 30 years, and its chairman since 2002. In this video, recorded in June 2021 when Don was 92, he explores the history of the Society and its journal The Wildean. Don also discusses how he discovered Wilde, and why this author was so important to him. He closes the interview with guidance for people just encountering Wilde and wishing to learn more.

The interviewer is Darcy Sullivan, and the videographer is Clayton Hartley. Special thanks to Vanessa Heron for her assistance.

Learn more about the Oscar Wilde Society at https://oscarwildesociety.co.uk/

Don Mead was born in March 1929 in Richmond, Surrey. He is married, with three daughters and three granddaughters. He studied insurance at the Chartered Insurance Institute, becoming a Chartered Insurer, and completed a law degree at Holborn College, University of London. “I came into insurance by accident,” Don says. “I was impressed by the chief executive of Cornhill Insurance, who was doing the recruiting himself. In 1994, after 40-odd years with the same company, doing a variety of jobs, I retired!” The last 10 years of his career were particularly interesting, involved a year working in France and many business trips overseas, to Europe, the Middle East, America, Mexico and Japan.

Don became fully involved with the Oscar Wilde Society after his retirement. He edited The Wildean from 1994 until 2016 and has contributed numerous articles to it and to the society’s publication Intentions. He is the co-author, with Thomas Wright, of Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer. He has written a series of booklets about locations associated with Oscar Wilde: Paris, Dublin, Dieppe and Berneval, Genoa and Liguria.

Don has worked voluntarily and tirelessly for the Society, taking it from a small group of people who met together in London in 1990 to a recognised and respected literary society. The society’s publications are required reading for both academics and general enthusiasts of Wilde’s works and of Victorian literature more broadly. The society's honorary patrons include Oscar Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, and its honorary president, Gyles Brandreth.