The Word of a Gentleman his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty). The Word of a Gentleman The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled "Undercut") was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Culture of Reading, Berkshire from 1895 to 1897. While he was there, he wrote "De Profundis", which was published in 1905. After his release, he lived in exile in France and wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", based on his experience of an execution carried out in Reading Gaol whilst he was imprisoned there. It was first published in 1898 under the pseudonym C.3.3, Wilde's erstwhile cell number. Other authors lived in and around Reading. Jane Austen attended Reading Ladies Boarding School, based in the Abbey Gateway, in 1784–86. Mary Russell Mitford lived in Reading for a number of years and then spent the