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From the Memoir: When Oscar Wilde’s Daughter-in-law Did ‘Oriental’ Makeup for Qurratulain Hyder

by Qurratulain Hyder

Published 2026-07-15 03:00:00+00:00

How does a young journalist end up with a face painted by Oscar Wilde’s daughter-in-law?

0:00 / 9:12 · Narrator Gacrux

Context

In this excerpt published on 15 July 2026, a young journalist stands in a Bond Street beauty parlor, watching Oscar Wilde’s daughter-in-law paint her face into a reddish-brown mask. The account captures the absurd friction of being a South Asian reporter in London during the 1953 coronation. Between assignments on mothballs and television appearances on "Oriental" sets, these pages preserve the strange roles people inhabited for an empire that was already fading.

Show notes

An excerpt from a memoir about a young journalist’s experiences in London during the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She describes her work writing for a national daily’s fashion page and receiving a makeover from Oscar Wilde’s daughter-in-law. It concludes with observations on the presence of Indian and Pakistani soldiers in the coronation parade and the relationship between Britain and its former colonies.

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