Join us for an evening with critically acclaimed and bestselling novelist John Boyne as he talks about his new novel The Weight of Angels and one of the great what-if stories of modern literature.
The life Oscar Wilde never had ― reimagined by John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, in his most ambitious and emotionally powerful novel yet.
‘Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed?’
When the Marquis of Queensbury left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: ‘For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite’. The most feted playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution and ultimately prison. From then on, his gilded existence spiralled into public disgrace, humiliation and an early death.
But what if he had simply ignored the insult? What direction might his life have taken? This is the premise of John Boyne’s extraordinary new novel, The Weight of Angels.
Rather than dying in penury in Paris at the age of forty-six, what if he had lived to bear witness to the momentous events and cataclysmic changes of the first part of the twentieth century, and even influence some of them? What if the second half of his life were as celebrated, dramatic, tumultuous and exhilarating as the first?
In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the great Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.
In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has published 15 novels for adults, 6 novellas, 6 novels for younger readers, a short story collection, and a picture book. His most famous book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, was a New York Times No.1 Bestseller, and adapted for film, theatre, opera, and ballet, selling more than 11 million copies worldwide. It is used in schools on every continent to introduce young readers to their study of the Holocaust.
Among his many international bestsellers are The Heart’s Invisible Furies, A Ladder to the Sky, and All the Broken Places. Between 2023 and 2025, John published his acclaimed novella sequence, Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, which was subsequently collected into one volume, The Elements. The Weight of Angels is his 16th novel.
Tickets: £12 without book (Admits one, £8 redeemable against a signed copy of The Weight of Angels) or £22 (Admits one, includes a signed copy of The Weight of Angels)