Wilson, A.N. 1950–

(Andrew Norman Wilson)

PERSONAL: Born October 27, 1950, in Stone, Stafford-shire, England; son of Norman (a business director) and Jean Dorothy Wilson; married Katherine Duncan-Jones (an academic), 1971; children: two daughters. Education: New College, Oxford, England, M.A., c. 1976.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 19 Union Square West, New York, NY 10003.

CAREER: Writer. Oxford University, Oxford, England, teacher, 1975; Merchant Taylor's School, Northwood, Middlesex, England, schoolmaster, 1975–80; Oxford University, lecturer in English, 1977–80; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, teacher, 1978–80.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Literature (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Chancellor's Essay Prize from Oxford University, 1971; Ellerton Theological Prize from Oxford University, 1975; John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, 1978, for The Sweets of Pimlico; Somerset Maugham Award, Southern Arts Prize, and Arts Council National Book Award, all 1981, all for The Healing Art; John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, 1981, for The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott; W.H. Smith Literary Award, 1983, for Wise Virgin; Whitbread Prize for Best Biography, Whitbread Breweries, 1988, for Tolstoy.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Sweets of Pimlico, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1977.

Unguarded Hours, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1978.

Kindly Light, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1979.

The Healing Art, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1980.

Who Was Oswald Fish?, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1981, David Charles, 1983.

Wise Virgin, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1982, Viking (New York, NY), 1983.

Scandal, or, Priscilla's Kindness, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1983, Viking (New York, NY), 1984.

Gentlemen in England: A Vision, Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

Love Unknown, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1986, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

Incline Our Hearts, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1988.

Pen Friends from Porlock, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1988.

A Bottle in the Smoke, Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

Daughters of Albion, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England), 1991.

The Vicar of Sorrows, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England, 1993.

Hearing Voices, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England, 1995.

A Watch in the Night, Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

Dream Children, Norton, 1998.

God's Funeral, Norton (New York, NY), 1999.

My Name Is Legion, Hutchinson (London, England), 2004, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2005.

A Jealous Ghost, Hutchinson (London, England), 2005.

NONFICTION

The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

The Life of John Milton, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

Hilaire Belloc, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1984, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1984.

How Can We Know?: An Essay on the Christian Religion, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Charles Moore and Gavin Stamp) The Church in Crisis, Hodder Stoughton (London, England), 1986.

Tolstoy, Norton (New York, NY), 1988.

Eminent Victorians, BBC Books (London, England), 1989, Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

C.S. Lewis: A Biography, Norton, 1990, Harper Perennial (London, England), 2005.

Against Religion, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1991.

Jesus, Norton (New York, NY), 1992.

The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor, Norton (New York, NY), 1993.

Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, Norton (New York, NY), 1997.

Iris Murdoch, as I Knew Her, Hutchinson (London, England), 2003.

London: A History, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2004.

London: A Short History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2004.

After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2005.

OTHER

(Editor) Bram Stoker, Dracula (novel), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

(Editor) Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (novel), Penguin (New York, NY), 1984.

Stray (for children), Walker (London, England), 1987.

(Editor) The Lion and the Honeycomb: The Religious Writings of Tolstoy, translated by Robert Chandler, Harper and Row (San Francisco, CA), 1987.

Tabitha, illustrated by Sarah Fox-Davies, Orchid Books (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor and author of introduction) Prayers, Poems, Meditations, Crossroad (New York, NY), 1990.

Hazel the Guinea Pig, illustrated by Jonathan Heale, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

(Author of introduction) Leo Tolstoy, How Much Does a Man Need?: And Other Short Stories, Penguin Books (New Yor, NY), 1993.

(Editor) The Norton Book of London, Norton (New York, NY), 1994.

The Tabitha Stories, illustrated by Sarah Fox-Davies, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1997.

Literary editor of Spectator, 1980–83; author of foreword to Tolstoy the Man, Edward A. Steiner, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2005.

ADAPTATIONS: London: A History was adapted as an audiobook, Recorded Books, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: A.N. Wilson is probably best known for his wide-ranging farcical novels mocking British life. He began his writing career in the late 1970s with several intricately plotted works exploiting the absurdities of Britain's social institutions. In more recent years he has also produced more somber works delineating the shallowness of the British bourgeoisie. But these novels are also valued for their satirical perspectives. In addition to his fiction, Wilson has written highly regarded biographies of John Milton, Walter Scott, and Hilaire Belloc and has published works on Christianity and Britain's religious climate. His success in both fiction and nonfiction has earned him praise as both a major novelist and an important, provocative critic-historian.

In his first novel, The Sweets of Pimlico, Wilson revealed a marked penchant for mining both the eccentric and the banal to comic advantage. The work concerns a young woman, Evelyn Tradescant, whose main interests are Charles Darwin's evolution theory, gardens, and beetles. Her sheltered life is irrevocably altered, however, when she befriends a mysterious German aristocrat, Theo Gormann, who shows extreme interest in Evelyn's mundane existence. Through her involvement with the self-consciously enigmatic baron, Evelyn finds herself in increasingly unusual predicaments: she commits incest with her supposedly homosexual brother, witnesses a museum bombing, and acquires a great deal of money. She also adopts the baron's own secretive behavior and ultimately finds herself in social intrigue with both him and his acquaintances. Paul Ableman, in a brief review for the Spectator, called The Sweets of Pimlico "an enchanting first novel" and commended Wilson's skill in producing a work of "intrinsic elegance as well as great charm and wit."

Wilson next wrote Unguarded Hours, a 1978 novel relating the misadventures of innocent protagonist Norman Shotover in the often ludicrous worlds of academia and organized religion. The novel begins, "Had the Dean's daughter worn a bra that afternoon, Norman Shotover might never have found out about the Church of England; still less about how to fly." From that intriguing opening sentence, Norman is portrayed as a good-natured fellow who pursues a clerical career for lack of an alternative and courts the college dean's daughter for want of true love. Much of the humor in Unguarded Hours derives from Norman's encounters with several outrageous characters, including Mr. Skeggs, an alcoholic self-proclaimed bishop—formerly an electrician—who haphazardly ordains Norman; Mungo, the aristocratic Dundee of Caik, given to impulsive comments such as "I don't hold with the Lake District;" and the dean, a rabble-rousing clergyman whose incendiary books include Chuck It, God. Wandering among these eccentrics is Shotover, who stumbles upon various lovers-in-action and ultimately finds his own sexual solace with the dean's compliant daughter, Cleopatra.

Unguarded Hours met with praise in Britain. Jeremy Treglown wrote in the New Statesman that, like The Sweets of Pimlico, Wilson's second novel possesses "a simple but impelling narrative movement … supported by a comic touch." Michael Neve also compared Unguarded Hours favorably with its predecessor. He wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that Wilson's first two novels were both "well observed" and concluded that "Unguarded Hours shows A.N. Wilson continuing to write acute and funny novels, small vignettes from a gentle Anglican moralist."

Wilson continued his chronicle of the hapless Shotover in Kindly Light, where the hero is first depicted as an unwilling member of the Catholic Institute of Alfonso (CIA). Norman is now disillusioned with religion, but various attempts to provoke excommunication backfire and result in his continued good standing with church authorities. Among his few enemies is prominent CIA figure Father Cassidy, who suspects Norman of anti-church treachery. Cassidy eventually causes Norman's transfer to South America. But en route, Norman becomes separated from his traveling companion—an alcoholic Priest—and ultimately drifts through a series of occupations, including grapefruit picker and movie extra. Years after leaving the CIA, Norman falls in love with the daughter of a popular novelist. He also reunites with the drunkard priest, and the novel ends after several principals have convened in Israel for further escapades.

Upon publication in 1979, Kindly Light was considered strained and excessive by some readers. But even these critics conceded that it was often hilarious, and some reviewers favoring the novel contended that it was Wilson's funniest work. Among the most enthusiastic reviewers was Susan Kennedy, who wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that Kindly Light compared favorably with the comedies of Evelyn Waugh and was "very, very funny: deadly accurate black comedy."

Wilson followed Kindly Light with The Healing Art, a more sentimental comedy about a middle-aged woman, Pamela Cowper, who learns that she is dying of cancer. Pamela is informed that she can significantly lengthen her lifespan by agreeing to chemotherapy. She refuses the treatment but finds that her health remains adequate. Her ward mate, however, degenerates noticeably, whereupon Pamela suspects that their physician, Doctor Tulloch, may have accidentally switched the two patients' x-rays. From this premise Wilson launches his familiar exposé on bungling bureaucracy, concentrating on that of the medical world but also mining academia for comedic value.

Like Wilson's preceding novels, The Healing Art earned generally favorable appraisals. In the Times Literary Supplement, William Boyd called Wilson's novel "a stimulating and thoughtful book." Boyd was most impressed with those aspects of the novel exploring Pamela's despair and subsequent hope for life. "The Healing Art is to be applauded for confronting such a painful and moving subject," Boyd commented. Simon Blow, who reviewed The Healing Art in the New Statesman, was more impressed with Wilson's comic achievement. Blow declared that though the novel's theme was "deeply tragic," Wilson was still successful "at playing black comedy that can make us laugh just when we should cry." Blow added that "Wilson has created a holocaust of avoidable errors where few remain standing" and that his "triumph is to make his devastating and truthful material so instantly acceptable."

Who Was Oswald Fish?, Wilson's fifth novel, concerns eccentric celebrity Fanny Williams and her efforts to restore a Gothic Victorian church designed by Oswald Fish. During the characteristic mayhem, Fish's memoirs are discovered, and these largely sexual accounts afford Wilson ample opportunity to contrast Victorian and contemporary British society. Tim Heald, writing in the London Times, called Who Was Oswald Fish? "an enjoyable, clever piece of black comedy."

Wilson derived humor from gloom in Wise Virgin, his 1981 novel about Giles Fox, a blind scholar obsessed with editing a medieval text advocating virginity. Fox's life has been one of emotional hardship: his first wife died in childbirth; he subsequently suffered blindness; and his second wife died in an automobile mishap. Hardened by tragedy, Fox devotes himself to his literary work and tolerates only the company of his daughter and his secretary, both of whom are virgins. Fox invests all his hopes in the book and his daughter, but upon publication his edition is dismissed in academia as inaccurate and untimely, and his daughter, whose virginity he so prized, falls in love with a manipulative fellow who actually prefers men.

Wise Virgin served to indicate Wilson's sense of compassion and his concern with life's crushing disappointments. In a review for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani contended that Wilson had seemed rather detached in his previous works, but that in Wise Virgin he had "successfully balanced his gift for wicked comedy with caring and compassion." Likewise, Time's Martha Duffy found Wise Virgin "deeper and more compassionate than Wilson's earlier novels," and she praised him for finding "his own balance between light and dark comedy." Pat Rogers also expressed these observations, writing in the Times Literary Supplement that Wilson's work was "groping towards a more tolerant version of contemporaneity." Rogers called Wise Virgin "an accomplished novel."

In 1983 Wilson published Scandal, or, Priscilla's Kindness, a comedy about sexual hijinks and British politics. The novel's protagonist is Derek Blore, a promising Parliament member whose social sophistication belies his preference for sadomasochistic sex. As often happens in Wilson's novels, however, a cast of secondary eccentrics rival the hero for outrageousness and thus earn the reader's interest. Among the more offbeat characters in Scandal are Blore's wife, Priscilla, who commits adultery out of kindness; Feathers, an amusingly despicable journalist who craves alcohol; and Bernadette, a dull prostitute who blandly ministers to Blore's need for a regular flogging. It is, of course, Blore's private practices that spark the criminal intrigue upon which the novel is structured.

Scandal earned Wilson further praise as a comic master. Writing in the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley described the novel as "deliciously witty" and deemed Wilson's prose "mercilessly tart." Yardley called Scandal "an exceedingly funny novel." In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Elaine Kendall accorded particular acclaim to Wilson's skills at characterization. "Where else," Kendall asked, "will you find a hoodlum who changes his name from Costigan to Costigano for professional reasons?" She called Scandal a "comic novel in the classic English tradition."

Wilson turned to the Victorian period for his next novel, Gentlemen in England: A Vision. In this work he lampooned that repressive period and exposed the often turbulent emotions inhibited in the English of that time. The novel centers on the Nettleship family, whose patriarch is an arrogant geologist. His wife is a woman of great self-control, but her formal demeanor yields to rampant passion when she meets an attractive painter. Other characters include Severus Egg, who laments the passing of the Romantic age and rues the Victorian period, and Timothy Lupton, the virile painter who wins Mrs. Nettleship's affections but is actually in love with her daughter, Maudie. Among the most enthusiastic reviewers of Gentlemen in England was Michiko Kakutani, who wrote in the New York Times that the novel marked Wilson's continued development as a comic writer. Kakutani noted that Wilson's most recent fiction—including the earlier Wise Virgin and Scandal—"attested to both a widening canvas and a growing sense of compassion." The reviewer contended that Gentlemen in England was Wilson's "most ambitious work yet."

In his next novel, Love Unknown, Wilson focuses on another key period in British history: the 1960s. Here Wilson tells of adulterous lovers, Simon and Monica, who frequent museums and indulge in artfully deliberate conversations about life, love, and art. Like his previous novels, Love Unknown contains a coterie of typically eccentric characters, and like the preceding works it too offers pointed barbs at institutions such as organized religion and social subjects such as feminism and infidelity.

Wilson's My Name Is Legion is a satiric novel that attacks both the British press and the government. It focuses on a British monk, Vivyan Chell, who spent time in the African country of Zinariya. After returning to London, Chell begins to speak out against a sleazy tabloid newspaper and its owner, Lennox Mark, who, along with the British government, helped fund the Zinariya's corrupt dictatorship. Mark hires the young Peter to lie about Chell's character, and the monk's past is sullied. However, unknown to either Mark or Chell, is the fact that they both had affairs with Peter's mother and one of them may be his father. "As the story unfolds, Chell comes to hold center stage, and ominous forces gather to plot his downfall," wrote Paul Lakeland in Commonweal. Booklist contributor Allison Block noted that the author "serves up multiple plots and blistering barbs that bore holes in every page."

Aside from his fiction, Wilson has produced noteworthy biographies. The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott was his first work in the genre, and its success encouraged critical re-evaluation of Scott's writings. Some critics complained that the book's seeming lack of critical insights undermined Wilson's contention that Scott was a great writer, but other reviewers commended Wilson's unabashed appreciation of Scott as a profound, prolific writer. A critic for the Economist acknowledged Wilson's reverence for Scott's works and stated: "Few books of literary criticism in this disillusioned age have been so full of infectious enthusiasm."

For his next biography Wilson turned to John Milton, arguably England's finest poet, whose Paradise Lost is generally considered the greatest epic in English verse. Wilson's work, The Life of John Milton, was cited as an engaging and incisive work on an artist who would seem to have already been chronicled excessively. The biography nonetheless earned praise from critical quarters such as the Los Angeles Times Book Review, where Paul Rosta described the biography as "scholarly and entertaining."

Wilson's third biography, Hilaire Belloc, is an account of the complex, wide-ranging British writer whose career stretched from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Belloc's canon includes light verse, children's stories, and many volumes on English history, but his often controversial opinions have rendered him notorious as an anti-Semite and idiosyncratic Catholic. Noel Annan wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that Wilson makes Belloc's onetime popularity seem credible. Annan considered Hilaire Belloc "an outstanding biography."

In Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her, Wilson provides a biography of the noted British novelist, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease before she died. Avoiding the straightforward chronological approach, Wilson instead explores the Murdoch that he knew during the last thirty years of her life. The author delves into Murdoch's personal life, including her dark moods and drinking, and also expounds on many of her novels. "The comments on the novels will prove useful to students of the fiction," wrote Stephen Wade in Contemporary Review.

In addition to his novels and biographies, Wilson has also written works on religion. In How Can We Know? he explicates his own relation to Christianity, and in The Church in Crisis, which he wrote with Charles Moore and Gavin Stamp, he contributes to an analysis of the Church of England's seeming decline. "The Clergy," Wilson's contribution to The Church in Crisis, was appraised by George Steiner as "elegantly and wittily couched." Steiner, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, added that Wilson's essay was "informed with theological awareness and with a genuine perception of the relevant dimensions."

Wilson's children's book Stray concerns a seven-year-old cat and his recollections of life on the road and in a pet shop, a convent, and an animal experimentation laboratory. "Grim as it is in places," reported David Profumo in the Times Literary Supplement, "the overall impression that the book creates is one of proper affection." In his review, Profumo praised Wilson's "imaginative sympathy."

Wilson turned to historical nonfiction with After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World, in which he attempts to unravel the reasons behind Great Britain's ultimate fall as a world leader. Focusing primarily on the five-decade era between the death of Queen Victoria and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the author outlines how Britain's influence started eroding during World War I as it began losing its influence over its own colonies and how the United States rose to take Britain's place following World War II. Calling the book "compulsively readable" and one of Wilson's "finest books," Andrew Roberts, writing in the New Criterion, also noted: "Like most highly intelligent people, Wilson doesn't stand on ceremony; he enjoys teasing, and he never thrusts his brilliance or scholarship down his readers' throats." Although Roberts thought that Wilson's views on America were prejudiced like so many of his British colleagues, the reviewer otherwise noted: "The author's sheer breadth of sympathies and interests is astonishing, and his views can be accepted as wise and accurate on virtually every single facet of British political, social, cultural, and intellectual life." A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: "Throughout, Wilson writes appreciatively, and without false sentimentality, of the old England of bicycles and weekend picnics and Agatha Christie." B. Allison Gray, writing in the Library Journal, noted the "amusing anecdotes" that Wilson includes in his historical look at Britain's fall.

As author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books, Wilson has developed into a unique and insightful observer of both past and present England. He has been commended as an impressive comedic talent and as a perceptive critic and social observer, and he has earned respect in England and America for both his productivity and his profundity.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 33, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 14: British Novelists since 1960, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983.

Wilson, A.N., Unguarded Hours, Secker Warburg (London, England), 1978.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2005, Allison Block, review of My Name Is Legion, p. 1573.

Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 1983, Bruce Allen, review of Wise Virgin, p. 33.

Commonweal, May 6, 2005, Paul Lakeland, review of My Name Is Legion, p. 28.

Contemporary Review, July, 2004, Stephen Wade, review of Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her, p. 51; October, 2004, review of London: A Short History, p. 251.

Economist, June 28, 1980, review of The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott; February 5, 1983.

Encounter, July-August, 1983, review of The Life of John Milton, p. 87.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2005, review of After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World, p. 1072.

Library Journal, October 15, 2005, B. Allison Gray, review of After the Victorians, p. 70.

Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1984, Elaine Kendall, review of Scandal, or Priscilla's Kindness, p. 34.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 10, 1983, Paul Rosta, review of The Life of John Milton, p. 10.

New Criterion, November, 2005, Andrew Roberts, review of After the Victorians, p. 66.

New Republic, May 23, 1983, Ann Hulbert, review of The Life of John Milton, p. 38.

New Statesman, April 28, 1978, Jeremy Treglown, review of Unguarded Hours, p. 566; May 25, 1979, Patricia Craig, review of Kindly Light, p. 762; June 6, 1980, Simon Blow, review of The Healing Art, p. 854; August 22, 1980, James Campbell, review of The Laird of Abbotsford, p. 16; October 23, 1981, Nicholas Shrimpton, review of Who Was Oswald Fish?, p. 22; October 29, 1982, Bill Greenwell, review of Wise Virgin, p. 31; January 21, 1983, Christopher Hill, review of The Life of John Milton, p. 22.

Newsweek, October 31, 1983, Peter S. Prescott, review of Wise Virgin, p. 84.

New York Times, October 27, 1983, Michiko Kakutani, review of Wise Virgin, p. 23; July 24, 1984, Michiko Kakutani, review of Hilaire Belloc: A Biography, p. 22; March 12, 1986, Michiko Kakutani, review of Gentlemen in England, p. 23; May 16, 1987, Michiko Kakutani, review of Love Unknown, p. 13.

New York Times Book Review, November 27, 1983, Michael Gorda, review of Wise Virgin, p. 12; September 2, 1984, Wilfrid Sheed, review of Hilaire Belloc, p. 3; February 17, 1985, review of Scandal, p. 27.

Observer (London, England), April 22, 1984, review of Hilaire Belloc, p. 22.

Spectator, November 25, 1978, Paul Ableman, review of The Sweets of Pimlico, p. 18; June 2, 1979, review of Kindly Light, p. 26; May 24, 1980, review of The Healing Art, p. 24; November 21, 1981, review of Who Was Oswald Fish?, p. 23; January 22, 1983, review of The Life of John Milton, p. 22; September 10, 1983, review of Scandal, p. 25; January 31, 1985.

Time, December 5, 1983, Martha Duffy, review of Wise Virgins, p. 99; November 5, 1984, R.Z. Sheppard, review of Scandal, p. 88.

Times (London, England), October 22, 1981, Tim Heald, review of Who Was Oswald Fish?, p. 11; January 20, 1983; September 8, 1983; June 5, 1985.

Times Literary Supplement, April 28, 1978, Michael Neve, review of Unguarded Hours, p. 463; November 30, 1979, Susan Kennedy, review of Kindly Light, p. 76; June 6, 1980, William Boyd, review of The Healing Art, p. 636; October 3, 1980, October 23, 1981, November 5, 1982, Pat Rogers, review of Wise Virgin, p. 1211; September 9, 1983; April 27, 1984, Noel Annan, review of Hilaire Belloc, p. 467; February 1, 1985; August 29, 1986; November 7, 1986, George Steiner, review of The Church in Crisis, p. 1238; April 3, 1987, David Profumo, review of Stray, p. 355.

Washington Post, October 24, 1984, Jonathan Yardley, review of Scandal, p. D2.