Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

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He is proficient equally as a biographer, novelist, historian, essayist, editor and literary journalist. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.

We meet his father, the Managing Director of Wedgwood, the grotesque teachers at his first boarding school, and the dons of Oxford - one of whom, at the age of just 20, he married, the renowned Shakespearean scholar, the late Katherine Duncan-Jones.In truth his background was more modest and shaped by the childhood trauma of seeing his brother die after falling from a haystack they were playing on. Before he came to London, as one of the "Best of Young British" novelists, and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A. 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. His chapter on the High Camp seminary which he attended in Oxford is among the funniest in the book. 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.

When you combine the deepest learning and the highest readability with the most plumptious story-telling, the result is A. 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. We follow his unsuccessful attempts to become an academic, his aspirations to be a Man of Letters, and his eventual encounters with the famous, including some memorable meetings with royalty.Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages are as sharply drawn as figures in Wilson's early comic fiction.

Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Daily Telegraph * Wilson is a torrentially readable autobiographer, capable of howlingly funny paragraphs, desperately sad scenes, gay slapstick, literary analysis and gossipy name-dropping in the same chapter. 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 Hudson Review * His memoir is, of course, highly readable; full of gossip and catty stories about the people he mixed with in the worlds of journalism, academia and publishing.N. Wilson's exquisite memoir tells the story of the wife he fell for as a student then betrayed - and the lifetime of lust and longing that led to a deeply poignant ending. Before he came to London, as one of the ‘Best of Young British’ novelists, and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A. As for joie de vivre, she had, her son reports, “a greater capacity than anyone I ever met to squeeze discontent from the happiest of circumstances”.

A “ceramic genius” from a family of seven generations of potters, Norman was headhunted by Wedgwood and became its managing director.Literary Review * Descriptions of life as a theological student have the mischievous, observant wit of an accomplished humourist. Had he been less “bloody wet”, he might not have married her and become a father of two by the age of 24. For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels.