WORTH GETTING WILDE ABOUT

Playwright, journalist and wit Oscar Wilde is enjoying a revival at the moment, spearheaded by a season of his plays currently underway in London’s West End.

Kicking off with a critically-acclaimed production of Lady Windermere’s Fan starring Jennifer Saunders, and later to also feature his most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde’s satirical take on Victorian society is as fresh today as ever. Wilde, although married with a family home in London’s Tite Street, lived a double life. A dutiful father and husband he was also the partying poster-boy of London’s then louche and often homosexual world of bars, cabarets and illicit sex.

The area around Pont

Many people’s bookshelves groan with the works of Georgette Heyer who, until her death in 1974, was the queen of Regency and Georgian romance, a bustles and breeches genre of writing that she helped establish from the 1930s onwards

Along with many detective novels, favourites such as Friday’s Girl and Devil’s Cub have been translated into 10 languages. Some 100,000 of her books are still sold every year and more than 50 titles remain in print.

But the woman behind this literary success was extremely wary of publicity, and, when pinned down to comment, was often selfdeprecating about her Street in Knightsbridge, now an upmarket area of prime central London, was then somewhere artists, scoundrels and actors gathered to drink and network

His former apartment on Pont Street is now for sale. It’s within a Dutchstyle property built in 1876, and designed by CW Stephens, who also created the world-famous Harrods.

Wilde’s old pied-a-terre includes an open-plan reception room, three bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, its own lift, a dining hall, kitchen and a terrace.

■ It’s on the market with agent JLL (020 7399 5010) for £4.95 million.