A01=Angus Wilson
Author_Angus Wilson
Category=FBC
Category=FYB
Class
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_classics
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Faber Finds
Kitchen Sink
Scandal
Society
Product details
- ISBN 9780571248490
- Weight: 194g
- Dimensions: 135 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jan 2009
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Written in the 1950s, the eight stories collected here are brilliantly of their time: the decade of rubber plants, espresso bars and skiffle, of Suez, Teddy Boys and Angry Young Men.
With compassion and deadly accuracy, Angus Wilson charts the scandals and secrets of the respectable middle classes - Kennie, the Borstal Boy mascot of an intellectual clique; June Raven, an SW3 hostess who gets over-involved with one of her publisher-husband's authors; Lord Peacehaven, retired megalomaniac; Maurice Liebig, teenage pawn in a family feud; and the mad old man who finds the justice of God in a hen roost.
Sir Angus Wilson CBE was born in Bexhill, Sussex, in 1913, the youngest of six boys, and grew up in a series of residential hotels after his family ran through their inheritance. After Westminster School and Oxford University, he joined the British Museum Library. In World War II, he worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, where the stress caused a breakdown and he took up writing as therapy. After the war, he returned to the British Museum and replaced 300,000 books that had been destroyed. Following the success of his second novel, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956), he gave up his job to dedicate time to writing. Homosexuality was still illegal, yet Wilson always wrote freely about his world; some libraries refused to stock his novels. Wilson became a Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978, and jointly with Malcolm Bradbury, established their ground-breaking MA in Creative Writing in 1970. He always insisted that his life companion Tony Garrett was acknowledged as his partner (Garrett was fired from his job as a probation officer). He and Tony left England for France in 1985, but Wilson's illness forced their return. The Royal Literary Fund supported Wilson in his final years. He died in 1991.
