The Secret Lives Of A Secret Agent: The Mysterious Life and Times of Alexander Wilson

by Tim Crook

This is the story of how Tim Cook unravelled the intelligence legend of Alexander Wilson, a double life more dramatic, complex, romantic and tragic than any character or plot conjured by the world of spy fiction.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

677 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3239097.html

Last year we were hugely entertained by the TV series Mrs Wilson, based on the same history as this book. The story is one of fundamental deceit; Alexander Wilson had four wives at the same time, and children with each of them, but managed to keep this more or less secret from all concerned. He was a British spy, and published author of a score of spy novels, but got sacked from the secret service in murky circumstances. He died suddenly in his third wife's home in 1963; it was not until 2007 that his various families found out about each other, largely thanks to the writer of this book, who is a professor of media studies at Goldsmiths in London.

The story is a fascinating one. Wilson managed to lead parallel lives for decades. His first two wives did at least realise that their relationships were over (divorce, however, was not an option); but the third and fourth wives were living not far apart, and Wilson managed to flit between households without being found out. He was in love with all of the women he married, and loved his children by their account, though he ran out of money pretty fast due to not having a job and indeed served prison time for small-scale financial fiddling. His habitual fantasising in real life clearly also fed into his writing, which was reasonably successful in the 1930s - he published 24 books between 1928 and 1940. I was rather reminded of Patrick Troughton, also a man of simultaneous relationships, who was a professional pretender by trade (also felled by a heart attack in his 60s). Troughton at least seems to have been more honest with his wives and girlfriends about his emotional commitments.

This extraordinary sequence of events is not served well by Crook. Rather than take us through Wilson's life chronologically, he has instead taken each of the women's stories and recounted them in separate chapters, in reminiscence style, followed by two chapters each on his secret service career and his literary career. This means that we are jerked about the timeline mercilessly. It would have been very interesting to match the chronology of Wilson's books directly with the documentary evidence about his second marriage, and essential to match the records of his petty crime convictions against the memories of his third wife. But the sources are treated as separate boxes telling separate stories, rather as Wilson in life kept his families from knowing about each other. The style is breathless and unreflective.

There are some annoying formatting issues as well - the entire book is in plain text with, for instance, extended extracts from Wilson's novels formatted exactly the same as the rest of the book; there are a decent number of photographs, all shoved at the end in apparently random order. It is a rare case where the fictionalised screen version, which stars Wilson's granddaughter as her own grandmother, does the facts more justice than this non-fiction version. I found the book surprisingly poor for an author who holds a professorship in journalism. It reads more like a sequence of newspaper feature articles stitched together. Maybe that's what it originally was.

[Sherrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued to read this after watching Ruth Wilson play the part of her grandmother in the tv series Mrs Wilson. Alison Wilson was the third wife of Alexander Wilson, although he was still married to the previous two and went on to marry a fourth. An interesting read, although i did skip the long passages reproducing parts of his novels.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Afraid I couldn't finish this. The writing didn't flow and I had to keep going back over sentances and paragraphs to make any sense of them. There were also several typos and evidence of lack of proof reading.
I had been looking forward to reading this, as I heard the TV adaptation was so good. Think this must be one of the few cases when the TV was better than the book.

[Bill Porter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fabulous story dragged down by its manner of presentation which consequently defies a rewarding read. A bizarre structure which starts with a summary of every chapter. And more suited to a scholarly thesis, you find huge subheadings within chapters.

I could go on. Actually I will. Last but not least a headache-inducing boldface sanserif print font crammed onto every page with scant regard for margins. One redeeming feature though, the TV series based on the book was brilliant. Mrs Wilson.

For contrast, try reading 'Double Agent Celery: MI5's Crooked Hero, by Carolinda Witt. Very similar story made ultra readable, well edited and showered with five stars by Goodreads readers.

[Tina Marga · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story is mysterious. Main questions seem to be (i) what was driving Alec Wilson to 'marry' four times and to maintain four households, in parallel? (ii) how did he manage to do this? (iii) to what extent did the disappointments in his professional life and his desire for grandeur impact his decisions to engage in four marriages i.e. with four wives and seven children? From the book of the third wife, Alison Wilson, I had understood that Alec's book-writing was fictitious with no relation to the real life that Alec led. However, this book wants to make us believe that Alec wrote in his books about his own experiences. We will probably never know. But what I know is that this book does not have a story-line and re-iterates facts and fiction, in a completely random order. There are three chapters with citations from Wilson's books, which are extremely tedious to read, let alone to understand. It would be best if someone would write now a readable book about Alec Wilson's life that provides us with a chronological story, starting with his childhood (that I only discovered on the last pages whereas it can explain a lot) along with here and there a description of the most likely reasons for the decisions this man made. Maybe a psychologist should do this. Since such a remarkable life is worth being remembered.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The TV mini-series based on this book was interesting, and led me to try one of Wilson's secret service novels.His fiction set in the early half of the twentieth century will certainly upset present day readers.

[Nancy Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a biography of Alexander Wilson, the character at the center of the "Mrs. Wilson" three-part television series starring Ruth Wilson on PBS. Alexander Wilson was a British man who managed to marry four different women without divorce or widowhood, while conducting a complex military and secret service career. He was also a talented author of published spy novels, making use of his career experiences. After his death in 1963, his respective wives and children discovered each other and attempted to understand how a man could have been so well loved by so many while largely absent and consistently duplicitous.

Anyone who has seen "Mrs. Wilson" will find this factual historical background interesting. While compelling and well-acted, the television production deviates from the facts (although not from the basic outline of the events) and having this factual background is therefore enlightening. Therefore I recommend this book as an companion to the television series but not as a freestanding biography. It is too clumsily constructed and poorly edited to stand on its own, which is why I have given it only three stars.

Put differently, the research done by Tim Cook and reported in this book was instrumental in reconstructing the life of Alexander Wilson for his family and for the development of the television series for a broader audience. It is therefore a worthwhile biography but not particularly digestible without more context than is available within its covers.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is so bizarre it has to be true. There are sadly no resolutions to the questions of was Mr. Wilson a secret agent or did he invent the persona. The research is quite good but the quality of the writing is slightly amateurish. I found it a bit jumbled as far as following the timeline of events. However I think the enthusiasm Mr. Crook has for his topic makes up for that. Lovers of all things espionage would enjoy this biography.

[Carole Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost unbelievable if this was fiction, but apparently it is a true story.