IRISH PEACOCK & SCARLET MARQUESS: THE REAL TRIAL OF OSCAR WILDEEdited by Merlin HollandFourth Estate, 8.99James Morton

The trials and tribulations of Oscar Wilde are indeed well known.

His hubristic behaviour, and his curious and ill-fated decision to prosecute the unbalanced Marquess of Queensberry; the lies to his solicitors; the wit with which he dealt with Edward Carson QC for the defendant; his Freudian slip when he commented on the ugliness of a young boy; his imprisonment, flight abroad and supposedly dying comment that either he or the wallpaper would have to go are the stuff of dozens of books.

Do we need another? The answer, in this case, is definitely yes.

Apart from a foreword by John Mortimer and a relatively short introduction, this is a splendidly annotated transcript of the trial - not of Wilde himself, although it turned into that - but of the Scarlet Marquess, the mad, bad and thoroughly dangerous to cross John Sholto Douglas.

Perhaps we could know more of the legal background.

The introduction by Henry Labouchere of an amendment - which criminalised homosexual conduct short of the full act - into a Bill designed to protect young girls was, in fact, not as much an afterthought as appears.

The rogue MP had taken serious soundings before he introduced it to a more or less empty House of Commons shortly before the summer recess in 1885.

The marquess already had one son who had died possibly because, after a homosexual relationship with the Earl of Rosebery, he could not face up to marriage.

Douglas did not wish to lose a second one.

What is so interesting is to be reminded just how boring criminal trials are generally.

We have been fed too many television trials where the questioning is incisive and in two minutes flat the villain is unmasked and confesses.

Transcripts show the reality is that there are pages and pages of turgid examination and cross-examination apparently getting nowhere.

So it is the case with Carson's cross-examination of Wilde, seeking to show not that he was a sodomite but simply that he posed as one.

There is much discussion of the meaning of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the then influential if now half-forgotten novel, Rebours, by J-K Huysmans.

Wilde's celebrated explanation for not kissing a youth, Walter Grainger - "Oh, dear no, he was, unfortunately, extremely ugly" - was not the end of the trial.

In fact, the case continued for another day.

What does come across is the relentlessness of Carson's questioning.

According to the mores of the time, Wilde's behaviour seems increasingly indefensible and his desire to sue Douglas as increasingly inexplicable as Carson hounds him inexorably over his relationships with young grooms, valets and a newspaper vendor on Worthing pier.

Dissecting Carson's approach in this case would make a most interesting study for young advocates.

James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist