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 Chevy Chase and in it the ballad is called "The Hunting of Cheviot", while the first manuscript version of the ballad was written ca. 1550 (MS Ashmole 48, Bodleian Library). In the seventeenth century, the tune was licensed in 1624 and again in 1675. Sir Philip Sidney said of this early ballad: In 1711 Joseph Addison wrote in "The Spectator", The old song of "Chevy-Chase" is the favourite ballad of the common people of England, and Ben Jonson used to say he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse of