Poet and lover of Oscar Wilde who wrote of “the love that dare not speak its name”
His poem “Two Loves” (1894) called male love “the love that dare not speak its name”, and it was used against Wilde at his trial the next year.
An English poet and journalist, third son of the Marquess of Queensberry. At Oxford he edited a student journal with a homoerotic subtext and met Oscar Wilde, beginning a stormy affair, and in the feud between his father and Wilde he urged Wilde to sue for libel. After converting to Catholicism in 1911 he repudiated homosexuality, and in 1920 he founded the antisemitic weekly Plain English, which promoted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1923 he served six months for libelling Churchill. Late in life he softened towards Wilde; he died in 1945.
Also known as: Bosie Douglas · Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas
Activities and affiliations
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1892–1945
Literature and arts
Related historical events
Wilde and after
His nickname came from his mother’s “Boysie”, shortened to “Bosie”. He attended Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, which he left without a degree, and at Oxford in 1892–93 edited the student journal The Spirit Lamp, with its homoerotic subtext. In 1893 he had a brief affair with George Ives. In the feud between Wilde and his father, the Marquess of Queensberry, he sided with Wilde and urged him to prosecute the Marquess for libel; his poem “Two Loves”, written in September 1892 and published in The Chameleon in December 1894, was used at Wilde’s trial. After Wilde’s release they lived together near Naples for a few months in 1897 until their families separated them.
In 1902 he married the bisexual poet Olive Custance, and after converting to Catholicism in 1911 he repudiated homosexuality. Plain English, which he founded in 1920, was a right-wing, Catholic and deeply antisemitic weekly; it ran a series called “The Jewish Peril”, its title taken from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and alleged that Churchill had falsified a report on the Battle of Jutland for Jewish financiers. For this he was convicted in 1923 of libelling Churchill and served six months. He called himself “a strong Conservative of the ‘Diehard’ variety”.
After prison his feelings towards Wilde softened. In Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up he wrote that some sins, like murder or theft, are also crimes, but homosexuality is not, any more than adultery. In the 1930s he corresponded with Marie Stopes and Bernard Shaw; he died in 1945.