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.
