Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

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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. In truth his background was more modest and shaped by the childhood trauma of seeing his brother die after falling from a haystack they were playing on. But as Wilson explores what it means to live “untogether” with someone, his tone is affectionate and forgiving. We meet the grotesque teachers at his first boarding school and then the dons of Oxford, one of whom he marries when he is just twenty years old. Male friendships mattered more to him, that with Josiah Wedgwood (Uncle Josie to the three Wilson kids) in particular.

The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages are as sharply drawn as figures in Wilson’s early comic fiction. 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.

Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. He is proficient equally as a biographer, novelist, historian, essayist, editor and literary journalist.

His early life takes in life at boarding school and also the influence of his parents – his father, Norman Wilson was the Managing Director of Wedgwood in the 1950s. Before he came to London, as one of the "Best of Young British" novelists, and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A. Before he came to London, as one of the ‘Best of Young British’ novelists, and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A. Marital warfare was the air I learned to breathe,” Wilson says, which may explain why – after enjoyable infant years at a convent school and trickier later ones at two boarding schools – he made the most unsuitable of marriages.But there is also a tenderness here, in his evocation of those whom he has loved, and hurt, the most.