Reading, Berkshire the Obscure, as the temporary home of Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol from 1895 to 1897. While there, he wrote his letter "De Profundis". After his release, he lived in exile in France and wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", based on his experience of the execution of Charles Wooldridge, carried out in Reading Gaol whilst he was imprisoned there. Ricky Gervais, who is from Reading, made the film "Cemetery Junction", which, although filmed elsewhere in the UK, is set in 1970s Reading and is named after a busy junction in East Reading.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol the poem, "He did not wear his scarlet coat"—because Wooldridge, as a member of the Royal Horse Guards, had a blue uniform—but justified this poetic licence because the second line would make no sense if it said "For blood and wine are "blue"". Several passages from the poem have become famous: <poem>Yet each man kills the thing he loves Some do it with a bitter look, The coward does it with a kiss, The line is a nod to Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", when Bassanio asks "Do all men kill the things they do not love?" A passage from