Confessions – A Life of Failed Promises – A. N. Wilson

A. N. Wilson is a writer known for his journalism, biographies and novels, in this book he turns his attention to his self and writes of his own life.

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. 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. This relationship and his parents marriage is examined and Wilson writes that ‘Marital warfare was the air I learned to breathe’. His own marriage lasts 15 years and he was a father of two by the age of 24 but Wilson resents that his youth has disappeared to fatherhood and a failed marriage.

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.

Hardback. 312 pages

24cm x 16cm x 3cm