A. N. Wilson
A. N. Wilson | |
---|---|
Born | Andrew Norman Wilson 27 October 1950 Stone, Staffordshire, England |
Nationality | British |
Education | Hillstone School, Great Malvern Rugby School |
Alma mater | New College, Oxford St Stephen's House, Oxford |
Occupation | Writer • newspaper columnist |
Spouse(s) |
; Ruth Guilding |
Children |
Andrew Norman Wilson (born 27 October 1950) is an English writer and newspaper columnist known for his critical biographies, novels and works of popular history. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and a former columnist for the London Evening Standard. He has been an occasional contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.
Early life and education
Wilson was born on 27 October 1950 in Stone in Staffordshire.[1] His father became the managing director of Wedgwood, the pottery company.[2]
He was first educated at the independent Catholic day school,
Wilson went to New College, Oxford, graduating in 1972.[4] He had originally entered St Stephen's House, Oxford,[5] a Church of England seminary, with the intention of being ordained as a priest,[4][6] but left the college after only one year of study,[4] and five years after graduation published the novel Unguarded Hours (1978)[6] based upon his experiences at the seminary and his perception of its homoerotic atmosphere.[6][5]
Wilson taught English at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, for two years and then spent seven years as a lecturer in medieval literature at St Hugh's College and New College, Oxford.[7]
Publications
A prolific journalist and author of nonfiction, Wilson has also written over 20 works of fiction, for which he has won the
In the early 1990s, in the wake of the
In August 2006, Wilson's biography of Sir John Betjeman was published. It was then discovered that he had been the victim of a hoax perpetrated by Betjeman's disgruntled biographer Bevis Hillier. Wilson had included in the book a letter (to Anglo-Irish writer Honor Tracy), purportedly by Betjeman, detailing a previously unknown love affair. Wilson acknowledged the letter to be a fiction when it was pointed out that it contained an acrostic spelling out an insulting message to him: "AN Wilson is a shit".[8][9]
In 2001, Wilson published Dante in Love, a study of the Italian poet
In addition to his biographies, Wilson has written four books covering entire eras, The Victorians (2002), After the Victorians (2005), Our Times (2008), and The Elizabethans (2011).[citation needed]
Critiques of Wilson's work
Lynn Barber of The Daily Telegraph wrote that "Wilson's forte is the character and he brilliantly conveys Betjeman's odd mixture of introspection and sociability, gaiety and melancholia, exhibition and self-disgust".[10]
In The Times (London), James Marriott called Wilson's book Resolution "a work of genius".[11]
Kathryn Hughes wrote in The Guardian of Wilson's biography of Queen Victoria, Victoria: A Life, "Subtle, thoughtful ... a shimmering and rather wonderful biography."[12] Daisy Goodwin in The Sunday Times review wrote: "This won't be the last biography of Victoria but it is certainly the most interesting and original in a long time."[13]
Wilson's
Wilson's biography Charles Darwin, Victorian Mythmaker (2017), was criticised by
Personal life
Wilson married the Shakespearean scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones in 1971, before his graduation. They had two daughters, Emily Wilson (born 1971) and Beatrice "Bee" Wilson (born 1974), and divorced in 1990. As of 1993[update] he was married to the art historian Ruth Guilding, with whom he has a third daughter, the painter Georgina "Georg" Wilson.[7]
Bibliography
Books
Non-fiction
- The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott (1980)
- The Life of John Milton: A Biography (1983)
- Hilaire Belloc: A Biography (1985)[22]
- How Can We Know? (1985)
- Penfriends from Porlock (1988)
- Tolstoy: A Biography (1988)
- C. S. Lewis: A Biography (1990)
- Against Religion: Why We Should Live Without It (1991)
- Jesus: A Life (1992)
- The Faber Book of Church and Clergy (editor) (1992)
- The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor (1993)
- Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (1997)
- God's Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization (1999)
- The Victorians (2002)
- Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her (2003)
- London: A Short History (2004)
- After the Victorians (2005)
- Betjeman (2006)
- Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English & American Literature (2007, illustrated by Barry Moser)
- Our Times (2008)
- Dante in Love (2011)
- The Elizabethans (2011)
- Hitler: A Short Biography (2011)
- Victoria: A Life (2014)
- The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible (2015)
- The Queen: The Life and Family of Queen Elizabeth II (2016)
- Charles Darwin, Victorian Mythmaker (2017) [1]
- Prince Albert: The Man Who Saved the Monarchy (2019)[23]
- The Mystery of Charles Dickens (2020)
- The King and the Christmas Tree (2021)
- Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises (2022): autobiography
Fiction
- The Sweets of Pimlico (1977)
- Unguarded Hours (1978)
- Kindly Light (1979)
- The Healing Art (1980)
- Who Was Oswald Fish? (1981)
- Wise Virgin (1982)
- Scandal (1983)
- Gentlemen in England (1983)
- Love Unknown (1986)
- Stray (1987)
- The Vicar of Sorrows (1993)
- The Tabitha Stories (1997)
- Dream Children (1998)
- My Name Is Legion (2004)
- A Jealous Ghost (2005)
- Winnie and Wolf (2007, long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize) – fictional account of the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Winifred Wagner[24]
- The Potter's Hand (2012)
- Resolution (2016)
- Aftershocks (2018)
The Lampitt Chronicles
- Incline Our Hearts (1988)
- A Bottle in the Smoke (1990)
- Daughters of Albion (1991)
- Hearing Voices (1995)
- A Watch in the Night (1996)
Critical studies and reviews of Wilson's work
- The Laird of Abbotsford
- McKie, David (1980), A View from Above, Cencrastus No. 4, Winter 1980-81, p. 39
Broadcasting
Title | Synopsis | Broadcast | Broadcaster |
---|---|---|---|
The Genius of Josiah Wedgwood | Wilson explores the life of his great hero, Josiah Wedgwood. As one of the founding fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Wedgwood was a self-made, self-educated creative giant, whose other achievements might be better known if he were not so celebrated for his pottery. | 19 April 2013 | BBC[25] |
Narnia's Lost Poet: The Secret Lives and Loves of C. S. Lewis | Wilson, a biographer of Narnia – bestselling children's author, famous Christian writer, Oxford academic and an aspiring poet who never achieved the same success in writing verse as he did prose.
|
27 November 2013 | BBC[26] |
Return to Betjemanland | Wilson travels to a landscape of beautiful houses and churches, beaches and seaside piers, where he examines the life and work of the poet and broadcaster Sir John Betjeman. | 1 September 2014 | BBC[27] |
Queen Victoria's Letters: A Monarch Unveiled | Wilson explores the personal life of Queen Victoria through her journals and letters in this psychological portrait of Britain's second longest reigning monarch. | 13 November 2014 20 November 2014 |
BBC[28] |
Return to Larkinland | Wilson revisits the life and works of the poet Philip Larkin. | Last shown 9 August 2022 | BBC[29] |
Return to Eliotland | Wilson revisits the life and works of the poet T. S. Eliot. | 8 October 2018 | BBC[30] |
Notes and references
- ^ "A. N. Wilson", Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ a b Davies, Hunter (12 January 1993). "Interview: In Bed With A. N. Wilson". The Independent. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
- ^ Leith, William (12 September 1992). "Interview: Messing with the Messiah". The Independent. Archived from the original on 21 September 2017. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
- ^ a b c "A. N. Wilson". Open Library. Archived from the original on 9 December 2012. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ a b "My time at Homo-erotic College". The Spectator. 1996. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ a b c Dorothy Cummings McLean (2014). "Not a Catholic Novel". Ignatius Press. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ a b "INTERVIEW / In bed with A N Wilson". The Independent. 12 January 1993. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ Brooks, Richard (27 August 2006). "Betjeman love letter is horrid hoax". The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
- ^ Marre, Oliver (20 January 2008). "Pendennis". The Observer. London. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
- ^ Barber, Lynn (27 August 2006). "Lucky to Have him". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
- ^ Marriott, James (3 September 2016). "Fiction review: Resolution by AN Wilson". www.thetimes.co.uk. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
- ^ Hughes, Kathryn (4 September 2014). "Victoria: A Life by AN Wilson – review". www.theguardian.com. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
- ^ Goodwin, Daisy. "Victoria: A Life by AN Wilson Review by Daisy Goodwin". www.thetimes.co.uk.
- ^ Evans, Richard J. (12 March 2012). "Hitler: A Short Biography". New Statesman. Retrieved 14 February 2013.
- ISSN 0264-0856
- ^ van Wyhe, John (21 August 2017). "'Radical' new biography of Darwin is unreliable and inaccurate". New Scientist. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
- ^ Hughes, Kathryn (30 August 2017). "Charles Darwin by A N Wilson review – how wrong can a biography be?". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
- ^ Woolfson, Adrian (24 August 2017). "Charles Darwin Victorian Mythmaker by A. N. Wilson review". Evening Standard. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
- ^ Jones, Steve (10 September 2017), "Book review: Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker by AN Wilson", The Sunday Times, retrieved 10 September 2017.
- ^ "Customer Review". www.amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
- ^ "Londoner's Diary: Literati catfight over Darwinism" Evening Standard, 11 September 2017
- ^ Briefly reviewed in The New Yorker (January 14, 1985) : 118.
- ^ Goodwin, Daisy (1 September 2019). "Prince Albert: The Man Who Saved the Monarchy: review by Daisy Goodwin". www.thetimes.co.uk.
- ^ Eagleton, Terry (4 August 2007). "Beauty and the beast". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
- ^ BBC – The Genius of Josiah Wedgwood
- ^ BBC – Narnia's Lost Poet
- ^ BBC – Return to Betjemanland
- ^ BBC – Queen Victoria's Letters
- ^ BBC – Return to Larkinland
- ^ BBC – Return to Eliotland
External links
- James Atlas "'The Busy, Busy Wasp'", The New York Times, 18 October 1992
- 'Sweetly Poisonous in a Welcome Way' On ANW's biography of C. S. Lewis
- Appearances on C-SPAN