John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry (1844-1900), is remembered for codifying the rules of boxing, and for ruining Oscar Wilde by hounding him through the courts for having a homosexual liaison with his son, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, leading to Wilde’s imprisonment, disgrace and exile. The conventional portrait we have of Queensberry is of a demented Scots nobleman pursuing the hapless playwright through the gaslit streets of Victorian London like some manic creation of Robert Louis Stevenson. Stratmann’s deeply researched biography presents a much more nuanced portrait, Queensberry emerging as Dr Jekyll as well as Mr Hyde. He was an extremely brave man, and the best amateur boxer of his age, regularly taking on professional prizefighters and beating