As someone sensible recently observed, ‘wild swimming’ is what used to be called ‘swimming’. But Wilde Swimming is something else. It is – the clue’s in the name – descriptive of Oscar Wilde taking his morning exercise in Berneval-le-Grand during the early part of his exile from England. He would pay a boy a few sous to sit on the steps of the bathing machine and guard his clothes while he swam out as far as he dared towards the busy shipping lanes of the Channel. The clothes were hardly valuable – his overcoat in particular was threadbare – but he was, not unreasonably, concerned about the theft of or interference with his belongings, given his notoriety. And who could face walking back to one’s hotel in bathing drawers? Oscar would look back to shore and reassure himself by counting along the distant row of machines and making out the form of the boy du jour.

There is, of course, no reason at all why this collection of my writing should appear under the imprimatur of the Wilde Swimming Society.