A. N. Wilson Biography, Life, Interesting Facts

Childhood & Early Life

English biographer, novelist, journalist, and broadcaster Andrew Norman Wilson was born on the 27 October 1950 in Stone, Staffordshire, England.

Education

A.N. Wilson was educated at Rugby School and did his tertiary studies at New College Oxford where he obtained a B.A. (1972) and an M.A. (1976).

Literary Career

Wilson has penned some award-winning biographies. His nonfiction work includes The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott (1980), The Life of John Milton: A Biography (1983), Hilaire Belloc: A Biography (1985), Tolstoy: A Biography (1988), Jesus: A Life (1992), Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (1997), Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her (2003), Betjeman (2006), Hitler: A Short Biography (2011) and Victoria: A Life (2014). He has also written London: A Short History (2004), After the Victorians (2005), Our Times (2008), Dante in Love (2011) and The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible (2015).

Fiction

Wilson’s first novel The Sweets of Pimlico was published in 1977.  Others he has written include Unguarded House (1978), Who Was Oswald Fish? (1981), Gentlemen in England (1983), Love Unknown (1986), The Tabitha Stories (1997), Dream Children (1998), A Jealous Ghost (2005), Winnie and Wolf (2007) and The Potter’s Hand (2012). His Lampitt Chronicles series consist of five novels: Incline Our Hearts (1988)mA Bottle in the Smoke (1990), Daughters of Albion (1991), Hearing Voices (1995) and A Watch in the Night (1996).

A.N. Wilson is heard regularly on BBC Radio and also writes columns for various newspapers including the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, the Daily Mail and the London Evening Standard.

Awards & Achievements

A.N. Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won many awards including the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize (1978), the Somerset Maugham Award (1981), the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize (1981), the Arts Council National Book Award (1981), the H. Smith Literary Award (1983) and the Whitbread Biography Award (1988). His novel Winnie and Wolf were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.

Controversies

In 2006 The Guardian newspaper reported that Wilson had been the subject of a hoax. A.N. Wilson was writing the biography of Sir John Betjeman when a letter from Betjeman to his mistress came into Wilson’s possession.

He used the letter for his book as evidence of a previously unknown relationship between Betjeman and the woman concerned. It turned out that Betjeman had not written the message and the clue was that the capital letters at the beginning of every sentence spell out a derogatory comment about Wilson.

Personal Life

A.N. Wilson was married an academic and scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones between 1971 and 1990.