15 Facts About Angus Wilson

Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson was an English novelist and short story writer.

Angus Wilson was one of England's first openly gay authors.

Angus Wilson was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.

Angus Wilson's grandfather had served in a prestigious Scottish army regiment, and owned an estate in Dumfriesshire, where William Johnstone-Angus Wilson was raised, and where he subsequently lived.

Angus Wilson was educated at Westminster School and Merton College, Oxford, and in 1937 became a librarian in the British Museum's Department of Printed Books, working on the new General Catalogue.

Angus Wilson was billeted with a "kind family" in the village of Simpson, who worried about his "prodigious consumption" of cigarettes by coughing theatrically.

Angus Wilson used to mince into the room wearing, in those days, outrageous clothes in all colours; he chain-smoked; his nails were bitten down to the quick and he had a rather hysterical laugh.

Angus Wilson's first publication was a collection of short stories, The Wrong Set, followed quickly by the daring novel Hemlock and After, which was a great success, prompting invitations to lecture in Europe.

Angus Wilson worked as a reviewer, and in 1955 he resigned from the British Museum to write full-time and moved to Suffolk.

Angus Wilson was instrumental in getting Colin Wilson's first novel published in 1956 and from 1957 he gave lectures further afield, in Japan, Switzerland, Australia, and the USA.

Angus Wilson was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1968 New Year Honours, and received many literary honours in succeeding years.

Angus Wilson was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1980 Birthday Honours, and was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 1982 to 1988.

Angus Wilson's remaining years were affected by ill health, and he died of a stroke at a nursing home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on 31 May 1991, aged 77.

Angus Wilson's writing, which has a strongly satirical vein, expresses his concern with preserving a liberal humanistic outlook in the face of fashionable doctrinaire temptations.

Angus Wilson was Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978, and jointly helped to establish their creative writing course at master's level in 1970, which was then a groundbreaking initiative in the United Kingdom.