True confessions

What a joy to listen to A.N. Wilson read his own life story. There are so many nuggets to savour in his descriptions of little events peppering his life, but his visit, aged 12 or so by bus to see L.S. Lowry, stands out as vividly as his father's forget-me-not blue eyes. His mother pops him on the bus saying "just ask the conductor to show you his house", he then has tea with Lowry, and is sensibly accompanied back by bus with the great man, to meet up with his mother in a department store in Manchester. This little scene and hundreds of others theatrically re-enacted by Wilson in dozens of regional accents make the book truly unforgettable.

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2 people found this helpful

Fascinating listening. Very well read and highly recommended.

Fascinating listening. Very well read and highly recommended. I was very sad when it finished.

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3 people found this helpful

Entertaining and educative at the outset

And the book is peppered with scurrilous stories that are thrilling to read and very thought-provoking!
I did not want this book to end and that fact that Wilson is a contemporary gave his tales, experiences and insights an extra edge! Thank you!

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Gracefully told

Having read several biographies written by A.N. Wilson, I was very much looking forward to his personal biography. It didn’t disappoint. A.N. Wilson told his story with grace and gravitas though I do wish this infinitely interesting man would’ve scratched more of the surface that’s his life. Highly recommended.

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excellent

Loved it. Really well read by the author. Moving, funny, poignant, full of insights. Didn't really know much about A N Wilson before listening but it has definitely motivated me to explore his other writing.

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Confessions of an unquiet soul

Confessions A Life of failed promises
Written and read by A N Wilson
11hours 47 minutes

Andrew Norman Wilson’s seventy years of life have been populated by a prodigious number of friends and associates from the spheres in which he has moved: Oxford intellectuals, members of Catholic and Protestant churches, writers, teachers, editors, journalists, politicians, Royalty … the list goes on. His erudition is wide-reaching (his references and quotations are part of the pleasure this book gives) and he has achieved considerable status as a n insightful critic and prize-winning novelist. But here in his Confessions he lives with an ‘avalanche of guilt’ as he considers life with at best a rueful air, but mostly with a self-excoriating honesty.

His years at Hillstone prep school in Malvern where he went at the age of seven (“Teddy optional first term only” was last on the list of required uniform) were truly horrific with severe canings which left him with weals he hid from his mother. The headmaster massaged what he called his ‘pipe’ either inside or outside his trousers whilst administering the caning and his wife Barbara inflicted terrible punishments on defenceless innocent boys . The desperately unhappy young Andrew both loved and hated her as she stroked his genitals and gave him cocoa to soothe his tears.

The twin colossi in the memoir are A.N.’s father Norman Wilson, a designer of ceramics and Managing Director of Wedgwood potteries, and his first wife Katherine Duncan-Jones, an Oxford don and renowned specialist in her field of medieval studies. Norman’s life was Wedgwood and one of the saddest elements in the memoir is his enforced retirement at the age of sixty, living out the rest of his life as a friendless unutterable bore repeating Wedgwood anecdotes and smoking his stinking 60 Senior Service a day. Driving a Bentley and calling himself Colonel, he was delightful company amongst We4dgwood colleagues; at home he was vulgar and explosively foul-tempered and lived in red-hot acrimony with his long-suffering wife whose skill was to make any kind of company a misery. No wonder that A.N. understood that he himself was an entirely unsuitable candidate for marriage.

And yet whilst as in his second undergraduate year at Oxford he fell for Katherine Duncan-Jones with the ‘lovely blue eyes’ ten years older than himself, and on the day he lost his virginity with her he also fathered a daughter for whose sake the couple were disastrously and unhappily married. She was in love with someone else and he was angry at having been trapped and robbed of his youth. Theirs was however a marriage of minds and the account of Katherine’s later descent into alcoholic dementia (through which A.N. continued to visit her despite their divorce years before) is one of the most tender and terrible accounts I’ve ever read. The marriage and its failure has had such a destructive effect on his life (marriage can be “utterly destructive of the human soul” he muses) that I wonder how his current wife (barely mentioned) has coped. What a pantechnicon of baggage A.N. must have brought with him!

The memoir is crammed with vignettes of people he has met - and frequently loved for he loves incontinently – titillating, scurrilous, funny, curious always interesting - and the tone is generally kind and forgiving. He himself is a Gordian knot of conflict and self reproach. Paths not pursued (as an artist, as a priest...) haunt him, and his deeply spiritual core is rent by shifting religious doubts and affirmations. It’s very much a memoir of the intellect and the heart of a gifted but rather sadly unquiet man who is vastly harder on himself than on others.

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2 people found this helpful

Very entertaining

It was great to hear A.N. telling his own story, including his imitations of the many (famous and notable) people he has met in his life. Funny and at times touching.

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Unmissable

Superb narration by the author. His command of the language and superb prose are breathtaking.

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Outstanding

I never know what to make of Wilson. On the one hand he often comes across and sounds like a pompous and demanding individual. On the other hand, his writing and the scope of his work us monumental.
After listening to thusIm still slightly divided but have to say I enjoyed every minute of this audiobook. It’s filled with insight and snippets. The loss of his wife and her decline with dementia must have been heartbreaking, particularly given her prestigious intellect. I genuinely felt fit him and he described his relationship with warmth and love. Absolutely fascinating from start to finish.

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Hugely enjoyed it

Andrew has given us another smart and brilliantly written book. Would recommend it to all that enjoys beauty.

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