Where have all the heroes gone?

Oscar Wilde used to be my hero. I was mad about him: from my late teens to early twenties, he was the epitome of all that I aspired to be (in artistic terms, at least). Back then I had lots of heroes (and heroines). The Marquis of Montrose, Jane Austen, Brian Wilson – a real eclectic mix. But no more.

Last September I attended the funeral of an old friend. It was held in the vast cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris, which is so packed with heroes that you really can’t avoid them. So I took the time to visit Oscar’s grave. I suppose deep down some part of me felt the need to pay homage.

It’s rather surprising, being Art Deco rather than Fin de Siecle: but I think he would have liked that – looking forward rather than back. And of course it set me wondering, where have all the heroes gone? The world seems run by morons and scumbags and not a hero in sight when you most need one.

The cause is internal. We have been made cynical by discovering that all our heroes have feet of clay. We know too much about them. I read the entire works of Oscar Wilde when I was twenty and my hero worship survived that; but by the time I’d finished reading his biography by Montgomery Hyde, although I still admired his brilliance, I had killed the magic.

Which brings me to why I was in that cemetery. My friend, Robert Gallagher, was a larger than life character. A gourmet cook, a connoisseur of wine, a raconteur, a bilingual Franco-American draft dodger, a brilliant, scathing wit and a bon viveur par excellence. This picture sums him up.

I know that I will never meet his like again, any more than I will get to meet Oscar Wilde. I am also well acquainted with his faults. What I need to do, what we all need to do, is to relearn the ability to recognise and celebrate the heroic in those around us. And he was a hero: bold, uncompromising, ruthless in calling out bullshit or ignorance and totally unapologetic.

In short, he was the kind of person we need more of. The fact that he often made us uncomfortable is exactly the point. I lost my faith in heroes because I thought they were meant to be perfect and I became disillusioned when they were not. I should have realised that heroism is about speaking truth to power even when your voice is drowned out by a thousand blustering fools and your feet are made of clay and you can feel them crumbling beneath you.

Where have all the heroes gone? They are inside us: we just need to find the courage to give them voice.