Known for his journalism, biographies and novels, A. N. Wilson
turns a merciless searchlight on his own early life, his experience
of sexual abuse, his catastrophic mistakes in love (sacred and
profane) and his life in Grub Street - as a prolific writer. Before
he came to London, as one of the "Best of Young British" novelists,
and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A. N. Wilson.
We meet his father, the Managing Director of Wedgwood, the
grotesque teachers at his first boarding school, and the dons of
Oxford - one of whom, at the age of just 20, he married, Katherine
Duncan-Jones, the renowned Shakespearean scholar. The book begins
with his heart-torn present-day visits to Katherine, now for
decades his ex-wife, who has slithered into the torments of
dementia. At every turn of this reminiscence, Wilson is baffled by
his earlier self - whether he is flirting with unsuitable lovers or
with the idea of the priesthood. His chapter on the High Camp
seminary which he attended in Oxford is among the funniest in the
book. We follow his unsuccessful attempts to become an academic,
his aspirations to be a Man of Letters, and his eventual encounters
with the famous, including some memorable meetings with royalty.
The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages
are as sharply drawn as figures in Wilson's early comic fiction.
But there is also a tenderness here, in his evocation of those whom
he has loved, and hurt, the most.
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