![]() ‘The country has choked itself on ill-feeling. ![]() Just as the book is going to press, Oscar Wilde is arrested, and the national mood sours. Bravely, they resolve to write a book, certain that if the arguments are sound and the suppositions good, then the ‘wheels of progress will turn’. Life under the current laws is impossible: it is time for change. They are respected writers and family men, but each is burdened by an unacceptable private life: Addington has brought a young man to live in his home Ellis’s wife has moved away to be with another woman. ![]() The New Life, Tom Crewe’s superb debut novel, is set in fin-de-siècle London and follows Addington and his co-author Henry Ellis (based on John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis) as they try to make a rational argument for ‘the impossible subject’. ![]() But once you are used to it, it is a little like reading about Ireland, or socialism.’ This is the accepting, if unfeeling, response of John Addington’s undergraduate daughter after reading his recently completed book on homosexuality. ![]()
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