Wilde was thirty-two - and had already been married for two years - before he actually had sex with another man.

Wilde claimed to prefer lower-class boys because "their passion was all body and no soul." He once bragged to a friend of having made love to five different boys in a single night. "I kissed each one of them in every part of their bodies," he said. "They were all dirty and appealed to me just for that reason."

Oscar Wilde (when 37) met Lord Alfred Douglas (when 21) and had a relationship for 9 years