Jonathan Fryer

The National Portrait Gallery's Character Sketches series provides biographical sketches of a specific group of historical figures from the Gallery's collection of portraits. Each volume examines the public images and private faces, the characters and relationships that gave each group its identity and importance. Introductions to each volume give a comprehensive account of the lives featured from a critical perspective. Journals, letters, diaries, anecdotes, poems and novels are all used to create portraits in words as well as images. This issue focuses on Soho in the 1950s and 1960s.

Soho in the Fifties and Sixties

An emotional friendship between two men unwelcome in society. Beloved writers Oscar Wilde and André Gide met in Paris in 1891. They became part of what W. H. Auden called the 'Homintern', an international network of gay men and their companions. Through diaries and letters, Jonathan Fryer looks at the two men's lives through the eyes of their mothers, their wives and their boyfriends. The two men would meet frequently throughout the world until Wilde's death in 1900. By this point, their tables had turned. Wilde was poor, disgraced and ostracised because of his sexuality whereas Gide had launched a career that would make him the most famous French writer of his generation and win him the Nobel Prize. André and Oscar is not just a literary history, but the story of a society that would seek to destroy its greatest writers. Jonathan Fryer graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Oriental Studies. After a spell working for Reuters News Agency he became a freelance writer and broadcaster, working mainly for the BBC and Middle Eastern television channels. A familiar voice from Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent, he is the author of a dozen volumes of history, biography and current affairs.

The Literary Friendship of André Gide and Oscar Wilde

André and Oscar

In the Autumn of 1891, Oscar Wilde set about conquering literary Paris. Gide was dazzled by the Irishman's energy and verve, but was driven to the edge of a nervous breakdown by Wilde's merciless paradoxes and questioning of religious faith. The two writers met repeatedly over the next ten years in France, Italy, and North Africa, both before and after Wilde's imprisonment. But by the time Wilde died in Paris in 1900, the tables had been turned. He was impoverished and disgraced, while Gide was well launched on a literary career that would make him the most famous French writer of his generation and win him the Nobel Prize. Andre and Oscar charts the stormy emotions of the Gide-Wilde friendship as well as the influence they had on each other. But it also looks at the two men's live through the eyes of their mothers, their wives, and their lovers, documented largely through diaries and letters from the period and illustrated with contemporary photographs. The book also provides an often surprising insight into what W. H. Auden would much later call the "Homintern" - an international network of gay men and their young companions - as well as the moral hypocrisy of the 1890s.

The Literary Friendship of Andre Gide and Oscar Wilde

Andre and Oscar

A Biography of Christopher Isherwood

ISherwood

Isherwood

At the age of 18 months, Jonathan Fryer was adopted into a prosperous business family in Greater Manchester, but he felt like a fish out of water there. When his adoptive father started interfering with him sexually, his only dream was to get away as far as possible. The seeds were thus sown for him to take on the life of a foreign correspondent, beginning with his leaving home at the age of 18 to cover the Vietnam War. Eccles Cakes is beautifully written, poignantly touching, disarmingly frank. Michael Bloch Jonathan Fryer graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Oriental Studies. After a spell working for Reuters News Agency he became a freelance writer and broadcaster, working mainly for the BBC and Middle Eastern television channels. A familiar voice from Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent, he is the author of a dozen volumes of history, biography and current affairs. He was finally reunited with his birth family in 2014.

Eccles Cakes: An Odd Tale of Survival

The big Irishman with the golden tongue has posthumously proved that the world is not black and white. His wit and his paradoxes are understood as profound and moral; his best playes are reconised as gems of English comedy.

Oscar Wilde

David Griffin

Adrian Flaherty

Sally Skeptic

Pinar Galip

An entertaining and delightful collection of short stories from the No. 84 Writing Group. Each one of the 84 stories is exactly 84 words long. Enjoy!Authors in the book: Kat Arney, Keith Avenue, Wendy Bretherton, George Brooker, Cathy Clement, Sue Couves, Anthony Cowin, Jayne Curtis, Em Dehaney, Debra Frayne, Jonathan Fryer, Ros Fryer, Peter Germany, David John Griffin, Matt Hill, Paul Hiscock, Sam Jewiss, Lex H Jones, Kayleigh Manley, Ben Morton, Brenda Marlene Moss, Catriona Murfitt, Judith Northwood-Boorman, Chrissie Pountain, Sally Skeptic, Dom Sullivan, Mike Swift, Paolo Viscardi, Richard Wall, Mark Whitehouse, P Zakia

Jonathan Fryer

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