Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland is a biographer and editor. He is the son of the author Vyvyan Holland and his second wife, Thelma Besant, and is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde. Although he is directly descended from Oscar Wilde, his last name is Holland because Wilde's wife, Constance, changed her children's surname to Holland, an old family name on her side to avoid shame after Wilde's trial for gross indecency, and subsequent imprisonment and fall from grace. For the last 30 years Holland has studied and researched Wilde?s life. He is the co-editor, with Rupert Hart-Davis, of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, and the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored version of his grandfather's 1895 trials,. Holland has criticized Richard Ellmann?s 1989 biography, Oscar Wilde, as inaccurate, particularly the claim of syphilis. Holland has also written The Wilde Album, a small volume that included hitherto unpublished photographs of Wilde. The book focuses on how the scandal caused by Wilde's trials affected his family, most notably his wife, Constance, and their children, Cyril and Vyvyan. 

January 1st, 1945 in London (Age 79)