A. N. Wilson
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Andrew Norman Wilson (born 27 October 1950), is an English writer, known for his critical biographies, novels and works of popular and cultural history. He is also a columnist for the London Evening Standard and was an occasional contributor to the Daily Mail,Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer. In 2006, he was the victim of a notable literary hoax played by a rival biographer.
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[edit] Life and work
A. N. Wilson was educated at Rugby School and New College, Oxford. Destined originally for ordination in the Church of England, Wilson entered St Stephen's House, the High Church theological hall at Oxford, but left at the end of his first year. He later became a convert to Roman Catholicism, but reverted to the Church of England. In the late 1980s he publically stated that he was an atheist, and published a pamphlet Against Religion in the Chatto & Windus CounterBlasts series; however, religious and ecclesiological themes continue to inform his work.
His particular slant on biography, and to some extent his take on the Victorian era topics he has covered in God's Funeral and The Victorians, can be traced to this religious ambivalence. His books on Leo Tolstoy (Whitbread Award for best biography of 1988), C. S. Lewis, Hilaire Belloc, and Jesus Christ are all simultaneously sympathetic to and critical of religious belief.
Despite a reputation gained early in his career of being a 'Young Fogey', Wilson is also noted for mischief, for example in comments on the parentage of Queen Victoria, and his dissenting views, which many found disrespectful, of Iris Murdoch.[citation needed]
He has also excited controversy through the expression of his views on the Middle East, at one point stating that Israel no longer has a right to exist. (When asked if this should be accomplished by force he refused to answer.)[citation needed]
[edit] Betjeman letter hoax
In August 2006 Wilson's biography of Sir John Betjeman was published. It was then discovered that he had been the victim of a hoax and had included a letter (to Anglo-Irish writer, Honor Tracy</