Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

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The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages are as sharply drawn as figures in Wilson’s early comic fiction. A “ceramic genius” from a family of seven generations of potters, Norman was headhunted by Wedgwood and became its managing director. Before he came to London, as one of the "Best of Young British" novelists, and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A.

We follow his varying careers or attempted careers, from dabbling with academia and becoming engrossed in Grub Street to fancying himself as a painter and a priest. But as Wilson explores what it means to live “untogether” with someone, his tone is affectionate and forgiving. He is proficient equally as a biographer, novelist, historian, essayist, editor and literary journalist. When you combine the deepest learning and the highest readability with the most plumptious story-telling, the result is A. Rory Knight Bruce, The Field * All these accounts are fascinating, rendered with both melancholy and self-deprecating humor.When he learned that his wife Jean had arranged for baby Andrew (sick in hospital) to be baptised, he was furious. 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. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. He’s respectful about Katherine and about his mother, to whom he grew close in her old age and widowhood. an arresting, honest, memorable book, never naive or sloppy , tender and forgiving towards those who have hurt Wilson, contemptuous and merciless about his own cowardice, vanity and failings.

At every turn of this reminiscence, Wilson is baffled by his earlier self – whether he is flirting with unsuitable lovers or with the idea of the priesthood. Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling children's author * Deliciously delicate barbs are scattered throughout the pages.He was born in Staffordshire, in one of the many houses his father Norman quickly regretted having bought (he spent his life feeling conned by estate agents). The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.

And he’s especially warm about his exasperating father, whose forced early exit from Wedgwood was unmerited and whose death happened at the same moment as a family landscape painting crashed from the wall in the room where his son was working. What the couple chiefly had in common was hypochondria: though Norman lived to 82 and Jean into her 90s, “they vied with one another as to which felt iller”.Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages are as sharply drawn as figures in his early comic fiction. As for Wilson the controversialist, there’s little sign of him here, though if you’re like me you’ll dislike what he says about Salman Rushdie, LS Lowry, psychotherapists and disbelief in God being a failure of the imagination. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. There’s plenty more he might have said about the relationship – and about his happy second marriage.