Angus Wilson: A Biography

by Margaret Drabble

A full-scale portrait of writer Angus Wilson by the distinguished novelist and author of The Gates of Ivory describes Wilson's role as a brilliant observer and commentator on the foibles and eccentricities of English life.

Genres: British Literature, Biography

Hardcover

First published August 11, 1997

About the author

Dame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer Bird-Cage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, The Sea Lady and most recently, the highly acclaimed The Pure Gold Baby. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.

Drabble famously has a long-running feud with her novelist sister, A.S. Byatt. The pair seldom see each other, and each does not read the books of the other.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It can be difficult to be satisfied with a biography. From this, I wanted more about his time in Japan and much more about Mishima.

If I couldn't get that, then I'd probably have gone for a literary biography. You see, Drabble reveals that Angus Wilson spent a great deal of time worrying about money and doing things he didn't really want to do because he got paid to do them. It wasn't very thrilling for him and, I'm afraid, it's not very interesting to read about.

I thought Margaret Drabble could have brought things alive with a bit of gossip and tittle-tattle, but she must have decided that she wanted to keep it straight and attributable.

...660 pages ... I should have just used the index ....



"one evening when alone with him upon the brown velvet sofa she suddenly threw herself upon the hearthrug, passionately solicited his advances, and, to render her offer irresistible, extracted from her person a bloody tampon which she flung into the fire with the cry 'I'm not too old, you see! There's life in the old dog yet!'"

"one of the minor incidental pleasures of the war was the exposure of bombed lavatory walls to the enquiring female eye."

"Angus felt himself ill-placed at table and stormed away, thereby offending Dr Ivan Morris, his Japanese wife Ayako Morris and Jintaro Kataoka, a former host in Japan."

Tony, Angus's partner, on Mishima's 1965 visit to Suffolk:
"To me in the morning, wanted us to go to bed together, but would make no move because it might be insult to A(ngus)."

1969 Trip to Tokyo:
"Angus caused offense ... by expecting the seventy-year-old Nobel prize-winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata to wait on him in his hotel."

[Charlie Richmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly thorough exploration of one of the most enigmatic literary characters ever. I would have given it 5 stars except for a few unfortunate typos and the puzzling technique that Drabble exhibited throughout of seemingly randomly referring to herself in either first or third person, often both within the same sentence.