Our Times

The third part in A.N. Wilson's magisterial history of Britain, which includes the critically acclaimed and bestselling The Victorians and After the Victorians, brings the reader up to the present day.

A very funny, extremely opinionated, always provocative and often thoughtful read... Wilson is endlessly entertaining

One of the most important books of recent years

This is an enormously enjoyable book, a non-systematic, chatty and wilful piece of work, slaloming through familiar terrain with brio and dash rather than statistics and documents

The story is told with a verve that catches the excitement of a turbulent era

A sweeping, masterly distillation of the past 55 years in Britain, acknowledging the incredible changes since the Queen took the throne in 1953 ... while also lamenting what has been lost

This is the final volume in A.N. Wilson's trilogy tracing the course of Britain from the accession of Queen Victoria to the present day. The whole work, finished in just six years, is a monument to its author's industry, erudition and skill. It is hard to think of a professional scholar who could have accomplished this grand feat, let alone spiced the narrative with such pungent wit and piquant anecdotes

Now that the trilogy is complete, it can be said with satisfaction that the verve, erudition and wit that distinguished the earlier books are undimmed in this latest work... He has written a fine work of popular history, and the fact that it is consistently entertaining in no way obscures the underlying seriousness

Wilson accurately skewers the follies of all and sundry

A brilliant panorama of the past 55 years... Where Wilson excels is in the mixture of fact, gossip and waspish thumbnail character sketches... Overall, Wilson's analysis of our age is inspired

Wilson has produced a scintillating, coruscating indictment of British national collapse since the 19th century ... Under Wilson's pen, such a history is richly told

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, many proclaimed the start of a new Elizabethan Age. Few had any inkling, however, of the stupendous changes that would take place over the next 50 years, in Britain and around the world. 
 
In Our Times, A.N. Wilson takes the reader on an exhilarating journey from that day to this. With his acute eye not just for the broad social and cultural sweep but also for the telling detail, he brilliantly distils half a century of unprecedented social and political change. 
 
Here are the defining events and characters of the modern age, from the Suez crisis to Vietnam, The Beatles to Princess Diana, the miners' strike to the Cold War. Here are the Angry Young Men, the satirists of Beyond the Fringe, Ruth Ellis and the abolition of hanging, the rise of pop culture and celebrity, industrial unrest and the Winter of Discontent, the Thatcher era and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. This book will propel you from post-war austerity - an age of deference in which men wore hats and women wore gloves - through the alterations in our social landscape to the multi-cultural Britain of today. Despite the appalling tyrannies that have taken place in the world, Wilson argues that in the last fifty years Britain has known a period of prosperity and peace without precedent in its history. 
 
With Our Times, A.N. Wilson triumphantly concludes the acclaimed trilogy which includes The Victorians and After the Victorians. It makes compelling reading for anyone interested in the forces that have shaped our world.

Winnie And Wolf

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 
 
'An outstanding novel, brilliantly imaginative and hypnotically readable' 
Selina Hastings, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

An extraordinary work whose achievements are almost Wagnerian in scale

A thoroughly engrossing read... A.N. Wilson offers a plethora of fascinating ideas on politics, philosophy and, above all, the music of Wagner... Winnie and Wolf vividly brings to life a place, a time and an extraordinary family

Deeply clever and gripping... Vividly presented and immaculately researched

Winnie and Wolf tells a convincing story; it is an emotionally fraught account of German Kultur at war and peace... A.N. Wilson's art is to create a richly chromatic drama of a Romantic Germany, darkened by the atonal experiments of Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Leverkühn, and the murderous ideas of Wolf

This novel should carry a warning: its appeal will be greatest for fans either of Wagner and European history, or of politics and philosophy

What Nazism owed to the British Empire fascinates Wilson, and his invention of Hitler's Americanised offspring invites us to relive the macabre history while acknowledging our own uncomfortable complicity in it... Bravely ambitious

Winnie and Wolf is a novel rich in philosophical reference - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, thorny as you like - and ruminative pleasures

Wilson's achievement is startling... Most contemporary English fiction looks rather etiolated and pointless by comparison

It would be hard to name a more ambitious recent work of fiction... Wilson brilliantly evokes Wagner's music

Wilson has done his research impeccably and he writes superbly well

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years 1923-40, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth. 
 
Winifred, an English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot. 
 
In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hope for the coming, not of a warrior, a fearless Siegfried, but of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist, a redeemer-figure. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal - a wild-eyed Viennese opera-fanatic in a trilby hat, a mac and a badly fitting suit. Hitler has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who believes she can really see his poetry. Almost at once they drop formalities and call one another 'Du' rather than 'Sie'. She is Winnie and he is Wolf. 
 
Like Winnie, Hitler was an outsider. Like her, he was haunted by the impossibility of reconciling the pursuit of love and the pursuit of power; the ultimate inevitability, if you pursued power, of destruction. Both had known the humiliations of poverty. Both felt angry and excluded by society. Both found each other in an unusual kinship that expressed itself through a love of opera.

Betjeman

The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller 
 
'A joy to read and re-read - the perfect match of author and subject' Hugh Massingberd, 'Books of the Year', Spectator

Wilson's forte is the character and he brilliantly conveys Betjeman's odd mixture of introspection and sociability, gaiety and melancholia, exhibition and self-disgust ... Betjeman is a poet who badly needs saving from his soppier fans, and this Wilson has done

Funny, poignant and unusually well written, Wilson's biography does the old boy proud

An A-grade demonstration of the point of Betjeman, the vast constituencies to which he appealed and the area of English life that he made his own

Terrific... [Wilson's] book zeroes in on Betjeman's struggles with his faith, which he places dead centre of the life and work, and on his family difficulties, and does so with extraordinary imaginative sympathy... Essential

A joy to read and re-read - the perfect match of author and subject

I've always wanted to reach the human being behind John Betjeman's charming but evasive verse autobiography Summoned by Bells. Now, thanks to A. N. Wilson's Betjeman, I can

Beautiful, inspiring and brilliantly perceptive… The masterpiece that A.N. Wilson was born to write.

A. N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

John Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century. His collected poems sold over two million copies. Television audiences loved his quirky evocations of landscape and architecture. 
 
As Poet Laureate, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. For much of his fifty year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a Field Marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. 
 
This book is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to Betjeman's private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. It is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer.

The World Our Parents Knew

After The Victorians

Follow-up to the bestselling The Victorians in which A. N. Wilson tells the story of the 'Decline and Fall' of Britain.

No review can do justice to the richness, liveliness and sheer fun of this book. Wilson has written one of the books of the year

Argumentative, thought-provoking and very well-written

He shows that the issues which dominate our headlines - immigration, Iraq, religious tolerance - have their roots in decisions made, or not made, as long ago as the Twenties ... A compelling read

The practised columnist's ability to provoke new thoughts with an original and opinionated argument is evident on nearly every page... Coherent and absorbing

A page-turner, lambent with fascination... One of the best things about the book is the use Wilson makes of the period's reflection in its fecund literature. And, indeed, his masterly piece of history is a work of literature too

Exceptionally well-written... Vigorous, lively and winningly eccentric

Readers who enjoyed the last volume will not be disappointed. After the Victorians has exactly the same compelling blend of political gossip, literary sketches and deft character portraits... The sheer quality of his cracking prose... There is something simply irresistible about After The Victorians

A.N. Wilson is a literary virtuoso... Each chapter could be a synopsis for a fascinating volume in its own right

Has all the hallmarks of another masterpiece... The range of Wilson's knowledge is breathtaking

The best single-volume work on the Victorian age yet written

Written with verve and wit, this book is utterly compelling - erudite, intelligent and wise. Essential reading

A provocative and spectacularly enjoyable history of the first half of the century

A. N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his fiction. He lives in North London.

When this book begins, in the reign of Edward VII, Great Britain commands the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. By the time it ends, with the Coronation of Elizabeth II, Britain has emerged victorious from a world war, but ruined as a world power. How did Britain's power and influence decline? This is one of the questions which A. N. Wilson seeks to answer in his masterly follow-up to The Victorians.

A Jealous Ghost

'A must for James admirers and everyone else who appreciates fine writing and an original story' Ruth Rendell, Guardian

'A must for James admirers and everyone else who appreciates fine writing and an original story'

A convincing, compelling and icy reworking of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, in which Sallie, an American girl obsessed by the subject of her PhD thesis, quits university to take on the job of temporary nanny in an English country house. Sallie is so manipulated by words, so deluded by her own emotional fantasies that she interferes with James's original narrative and screws it into terrifying reality.

'Chilling... Once you have read A Jealous Ghost, I'm afraid you won't be able to get it out of your head. Ever? Quite possibly'

'Irresistibly readable and, finally, terrifying. Wilson turns the screw in masterly fashion'

'Gruesomely entertaining ... intellectually fascinating'

'A tragi-comedy of elegant and unrelieved blackness'

'Erudite and compelling... Genuinely hard to put down'

'Wilson has always been a brilliant storyteller, who &shy;- unlike many of his no less famous contemporaries - is incapable of ever writing a boring line... Masterly... Always enthralling... Here is a book one races through, so eager is one to know what happens next... In [Wilson's] hands, as in James's, each turn of the screw succeeds in intensifying the reader's unease'

A. N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

There is something rather disquieting about Sallie Declan, a young American in London, and it is not just her obsession with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the subject of her PhD thesis. 
There is her decision, almost casually taken, to leave her studies for a temporary job as a nanny in a large country house. She seems to display astonishing naivety as she build a fantasy about her emotional future there. Surely she can see it is all delusion? 
But a progressively darker reality unfolds as we are led inexorably towards a terrible and shocking climax.

My Name Is Legion

'Brilliantly inventive... A disturbing and highly original novel' Stephen Glover, Daily Mail

Far and away the best novel of the year was A. N. Wilson's angry, passionate and spiritual onslaught on modern Mammon and the media... which should have won the Man Booker prize, but typically was not shortlisted

A wonderful, thrilling depiction of media manipulation, corruption, tolerance and promiscuity. It's so good, and so wise, it hurts. It's the late-20th century in a gulp

Blisteringly funny... My Name Is Legion is not one of those soft-centred satires that ducks the issue. It throws down the gauntlet to Fleet Street and asks some tough questions of the newspapers we read

My Name Is Legion weaves a compelling modern morality tale of crime and punishment that links the world of the rich and powerful to that of the poor and dispossessed... All of this is highly enjoyable, and kept going with an irresistibly waspish verve

The most spot-on novel about Fleet Street ever written... Chillingly accurate

A big, broad, sweeping book, as disturbing as it is funny

Brilliantly inventive... A disturbing and highly original novel

At its heart, this is a novel about the tabloid press in modern Britain. The scenes involving The Legion, its monstrous proprietor Lennox Mark and its variously brutal, corrupt of self-loathing journalists, are where Wilson's imagination has really been unleashed... Terrifyingly funny

The Daily Legion is a tabloid that peddles celebrity gossip and denounces asylum seekers. However, its financial survival depends on the support of a brutal African government. Recklessly defending this corrupt dictatorship, the newspaper faces off against Father Vivyan Chell, an Anglican monk and missionary who is working to overthrow the corrupt regime. 
 
My Name Is Legion is a savage satire on the morality of contemporary Britain - its Press, its politics, its Church, its rich, its underclass. Wilson's London is a bleak, if occasionally hilarious, place: murderous, lustful, money-obsessed and haunted by strange gods.

A.N. Wilson

With The Elizabethans, AN Wilson returns to his winning formula.

The England Wilson describes is one of perennial fascination to readers of both history and fiction ... for those who are content to revisit some well-known scenes, and encounter some surprises, there is much to treasure.

There is no doubt about the overall power of the pictures he draws. Particularly when he is considering the great literary figures - Sidney, Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare - there is genuine excitement and empathy.

Hot on the heels of The Victorians ... His witty conversational style and eye for period detail bring the brilliance and spectacle of the Elizabethan age vividly to life.

He looks through the eyes of some of the most colourful and celebrated characters in English history and culture . . . Readers will take delight.

A fitting monument to an expansive epoch.

AN Wilson’s one-volume history captures the heady turmoil of a flourishing era, laying doting emphasis on the titanic charisma of the Virgin Queen herself.

England under Elizabeth I. 
 
A time of war and plague, politics and rebellion, personal heroism and religious fanaticism. When if you were born poor you stayed poor, and the thumbscrews and the rack could be the grim prelude to the executioner's block. 
 
But it was also an age that encouraged literary genius, global exploration, and timeless beauty. When the lowly privateer Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe with no reliable navigational instruments and only a drunken, mutinous crew for company. When the Queen's favourite, the wealthy and handsome Robert Dudley, was widely suspected of having killed his wife. And when only the machinations of ruthless intriguers like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham prevented Elizabeth's kingdom from descending into anarchy and political chaos. 
 
The Elizabethans is a panoramic, exhilarating depiction of an intensely colourful period by master-historian, A N Wilson. This is what life under Elizabeth I was really like.

A.N. Wilson

Praise for The Elizabethans

With The Elizabethans, AN Wilson returns to his winning formula.

The England Wilson describes is one of perennial fascination to readers of both history and fiction ... for those who are content to revisit some well-known scenes, and encounter some surprises, there is much to tre ...

There is no doubt about the overall power of the pictures he draws. Particularly when he is considering the great literary figures - Sidney, Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare - there is genuine excitement and empathy.

With The Elizabethans, AN Wilson returns to his winning formula.

The England Wilson describes is one of perennial fascination to readers of both history and fiction ... for those who are content to revisit some well-known scenes, and encounter some surprises, there is much to tre ...

There is no doubt about the overall power of the pictures he draws. Particularly when he is considering the great literary figures - Sidney, Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare - there is genuine excitement and empathy.

With The Elizabethans, AN Wilson returns to his winning formula.

The England Wilson describes is one of perennial fascination to readers of both history and fiction ... for those who are content to revisit some well-known scenes, and encounter some surprises, there is much to tre ...

There is no doubt about the overall power of the pictures he draws. Particularly when he is considering the great literary figures - Sidney, Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare - there is genuine excitement and empathy.

Books by A.N. Wilson

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