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HIS great-uncle was a notorious aristocrat who was known for seducing Oscar Wilde, but Lord Gawain Douglas is aiming to set the record straight about his relative when he gives a talk at Harrow Museum on March 16.

Lord Douglas, 57, decided to research his family history after Oscar Wilde's centenary in 2000. His great-uncle Alfred (or "Bosie" as he was always known) is infamous for his involvement in the sex scandal that led to Wilde's imprisonment. A charismatic poet and Oxford graduate, Bosie led Wilde to leave his wife Constance and embark on a stormy affair and liasons with rent boys. When Bosie's father, the cantankerous Marquis of Queensberry, found out he called Wilde a sodomite, a slur that led to a court case and Wilde's later conviction.

But the latest Lord Douglas thinks it is high time Bosie was recognised as an artist in his own right.

He said: "He was given a very bad press at the time and since, but you have to remember that he was half Wilde's age, and a very headstrong young man; if anyone it was Wilde who should have known better. Bosie was a considerable man of letters and a clever poet, and enormously successful in his time; at one point he was selling more books than Rudyard Kipling."

There has been a burgeoning interest in Wilde's life and work in recent years, which started with the 1997 film "Wilde" starring Stephen Fry and Jude Law. But Lord Douglas said that the film could never show the full story.

"I thought Jude Law's portrayal of Bosie was brilliant, although unfortunately the film gave no space to the literary side of their friendship," he said. "What has very much been forgotten is that they inspired each other's works, and their writing might not have had the same bite if it wasn't for their friendship. In the course of my research I have got to know Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson and there has been a reconciliation between our two families. The real pity is that the scandal caused a violent falling-out and a terrible fued between my great-grandfather and his sons."

Descended from the 14th century Black Douglas', a tyrannical ruler in the lowlands of Scotland, the Douglases have a proud history: what Wilde called a mad, bad line'. But because of the fued, the family were forced to sell their traditional seat, in Dumfriesshire. Nevertheless, the latest Lord Douglas is doing well. Married with six children of his own, he lives in Deal in Kent, and is himself a poet and an accomplished pianist.

His talk "Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas" is on at the Tithe Barn (Harrow Museum), Headstone Lane, Harrow on Thursday, March 16 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £10 (£8/£6 concessions). Box office: 020 8428 0124.

4:55pm Monday 13th March 2006

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