Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

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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 reader is dutifully and proportionally dosed with humour, the wry portraits of acolytes of church and academic grove, the mad antics of people who make up more of the world than you might think.

There are some good portraits of friends and acquaintances, but also rather a lot of uninteresting stuff. The same is true of Wilson’s experience as a university lecturer at Oxford and then as a journalist. The name-dropping is of a truly world-class standard, although I suppose those were the circles he moved in. When talking about his own intellectual activity and relationship with religion he can be fascinating and manages to stay this side of pretension most of the time – but I did mutter “Oh, for heaven’s sake” (I paraphrase) when told “I still read the New Testament in Greek every year,” for example.I came on this book, by my usual manner of selection, haphazard rooting about in the world of books. A snippet in a magazine here or there, a recommendation, a review and I'm off like a bloodhound - must read that! 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.

These people stay with you, they have not gone unsung, we take away memorable and amusing stories of them. We'd never have known how the Vicar and his wife, puzzled that in so wanting a baby and having done they felt everything to make it happen, finally succeeded- a talk to the wife by a doctor , telling her the relevant thing to make it happen, and lo! the longed for babe. Here we are reminded by Wilson of the big, the perennial questions of Tolstoy's endless searching: ' are the gospels morally true? Can we respond to their radical demands? Questions ' that never go away' He ends with a reverie at Tolstoy's grave, and so we also can vicariously attend that green place among the trees in which the ancient Tolstoy came we hope to peaceful rest.

Other stories

The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is a former Bishop of Oxford, and an Hon. Professor of Theology at King’s College, London. His autobiography, The Shaping of a Soul: A life taken by surprise , is to be published by Christian Alternative Books This appear the book of a writer, to whom a work is entrusted to speak of a milieu and its people, the definite strips of eccentrics, and remote intellectual endeavours of some Oxford heads, the bullish males , the pretty women, the big drinking. Now Wilson has turned his hand to a memoir covering roughly the first half of his life, from family origins to a mid-career Tolstoy biography — and, of course, mastering Russian in the process. All the Wilson virtues are here: wit and acute observation, scholarship, and brilliantly etched portraits of individuals, from troubled parents and baleful schoolmasters to wonderfully odd Oxford dons and literary compatriots. (The profile of Christopher Tolkien, son of the Lord of the Rings author, is remarkable for both its acuity and sympathy.) The account of his friend Michael Hollings who became a priest and the host of homeless people men and women that attended his funeral in Westminster Cathedral is described by Wilson: I found Confessions a real mixed bag of a book. A.N. Wilson writes extremely well, of course, and there are some nuggets of insight and description, but there is also a lot that I found frankly boring.

When you combine the deepest learning and the highest readability with the most plumptious story-telling, the result is A. N. Wilson … Stephen Fry But now, Wilson turns the light upon himself. At Oxford, he married his tutor but then entered St Stephen's House to train for the Anglican priesthood. His portrait of this Anglican seminary and its high camp ethos is hilarious and full of anecdote, yet he also describes how he was on the threshold of a stellar career as writer and critic. What is also clear is that they are not just contradictory: they are ceaselessly jostling for pre-eminence in his life, first one and then another taking control. First, there is the serious novelist. But Wilson is also a fast and fluent writer, giving him a successful career as a journalist. At one time, besides writing several books, he was writing three columns a week for the newspapers. As he says, writing a book is satisfying, “But it does not give that heady buzz which still comes upon me if a national newspaper has rung up for an article, and I see it in print the next morning.” At least up to the time of his father’s death, and the publication of his biography of Tolstoy, which is where this book ends, Wilson’s life was painful. His parents, sometimes crammed together in a small house, were totally estranged. His mother had an “unrivalled capacity to extract unhappiness from any situation however neutral or cheerful”. His father, a militant atheist, lost his job and spent decades endlessly repeating stories about the Wedgewood family, for whom he had worked.

By Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes

A large colour photograph in a magazine of a man wearing granny type spectacles, with pale blue eyes ,I felt sure never blinked, studying with a hand held magnifying glass a old but reverent copy of ' Paradise Lost' At every turn of this reminiscence, Wilson is baffled by his earlier self - whether 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. At every turn of this reminiscence, Wilson is baffled by his earlier self – whether 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.