Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

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Only in her 70s, when she developed dementia and he rushed up to Oxford several times a week to check on her, did his anger soften.

There’s plenty more he might have said about the relationship – and about his happy second marriage.His last book The Mystery of Charles Dickens was published in 2020 to great critical acclaim and is at present being dramatized by Andrew Davies for British television. Had he been less “bloody wet”, he might not have married her and become a father of two by the age of 24. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual.

The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. He was born in Staffordshire, in one of the many houses his father Norman quickly regretted having bought (he spent his life feeling conned by estate agents). But as Wilson explores what it means to live “untogether” with someone, his tone is affectionate and forgiving. an arresting, honest, memorable book, never naive or sloppy , tender and forgiving towards those who have hurt Wilson, contemptuous and merciless about his own cowardice, vanity and failings. He is proficient equally as a biographer, novelist, historian, essayist, editor and literary journalist.His book is a mea culpa, a self-appraisal so damning (“writings not so good, deeds not so virtuous”) that it becomes almost endearing. 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. When you combine the deepest learning and the highest readability with the most plumptious story-telling, the result is A. For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels.