A. N. Wilson – författare

In this landmark biography of Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, A. N. Wilson narrates the complex drama of the writer’s life: his childhood of aristocratic privilege but emotional deprivation, his discovery of his literary genius after aimless years of gambling and womanizing, and his increasingly disastrous marriage. Wilson sweeps away the long-held belief that Tolstoy’s works were the exact mirror of his life, and instead traces the roots of Tolstoy’s art to his relationship with God, with women, and with Russia. He also breaks new ground in recreating the world that shaped the great novelist’s life and art—the turmoil of ideas and politics in nineteenth-century Russia and the incredible literary renaissance that made Tolstoy’s work possible. "Admirable. . . . Absorbing. . . . Superb."—Anthony Burgess "Stands as a model of the biographer’s art: intelligent and opinionated, yet judicious—and, what’s more, deliciously readable."—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the brilliant, prolific writer, C. S. Lewis.C. S. Lewis was a deeply complex man, capable of inspiring both great devotion and great hostility. This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the clever child from the ‘Little End Room’ of his Ulster childhood and adult life, exploring Lewis’s unwilling conversion to Christianity, the genesis of his writing, and the web of his relationships.

This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the brilliant, prolific writer, C. S. Lewis.C. S. Lewis was a deeply complex man, capable of inspiring both great devotion and great hostility. This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the clever child from the `Little End Room’ of his Ulster childhood and adult life, exploring Lewis’s unwilling conversion to Christianity, the genesis of his writing, and the web of his relationships.

Written by acclaimed biographer A. N. Wilson, Hitler offers a short, sharp, gripping account of one of the twentieth century’s most monstrous and influential figures.In 1923, a thirty-four year old Adolf Hitler was in prison after taking part in an unsuccessful putsch to overthrow the German government. Within a decade, he was the most powerful man in Europe.As Germany’s leader, Hitler delivered full employment and what appeared to be a booming economy to the nation – while Britain was suffering punishing levels of unemployment with no real welfare benefits. His popularity seemed to know no bounds; the slow deprivation of civil freedoms and rights to Jews did not initially displease all Germans, and the full extent of Nazi anti-Semitic extermination plans were incredible to many even within their own movement – let alone to the outside world – when they began to be put into operation during the early 1940s.Internationally, too, Hitler’s triumphs were extraordinary, and soon the Rhineland, Sudetenland and Austria fell to the German army, who suffered barely a casualty. By 1940, there was no doubt that Hitler was Europe’s master.But there was another story – and in this utterly compelling short biography, acclaimed writer A.N. Wilson positions Hitler as a man who not only embodied the excesses of the Third Reich but one who also represented the mediocrity of what optimists called `the Century of the Common Man’. For all the limitations of his personal accomplishments – as the child of a poverty stricken family, with no great educational, military or moral qualifications for leadership – Hitler was able, by remarkable energy, superbly choreographed rallies and electrifying rhetoric, to become a second Napoleon.In a field populated with lengthy tomes, Wilson’s brief, insightful portrait offers a compelling introduction to a man who continues to fascinate and appal.

"An erudite, elegant, and quietly impassioned plea" exploring historical and literary aspects of the Bible is "an easy, pleasurable read" (The Guardian).In The Book of the People, acclaimed author A. N. Wilson explores how readers and thinkers have approached the Bible, and how it might be read today. Charting his own relationship with the Bible over a lifetime of writing, Wilson argues that it remains relevant even in a largely secular society, as a philosophical work, a work of literature, and a cultural touchstone that the western world has answered to for nearly two thousand years: Martin Luther King was "reading the Bible" when he started the Civil Rights movement, and when Michelangelo painted the fresco cycles in the Sistine Chapel, he was "reading the Bible." Wilson challenges the way fundamentalists—whether believers or non-believers—have misused the Bible, either by neglecting and failing to recognize its cultural significance, or by using it as a weapon against those with whom they disagree.Erudite, witty and accessible, The Book of the People seeks to reclaim the Good Book as our seminal work of literature, and a book for the imagination."A work of genius." —The Times (London)"Wide-ranging and richly stimulating." —Sunday Times (London)"Wilson''s delightful and unexpectedly moving book is characterized by intellectual humility." —New Statesman

A radical reappraisal of Charles Darwin from the bestselling author of Victoria: A Life.With the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin—hailed as the man who "discovered evolution"—was propelled into the pantheon of great scientific thinkers, alongside Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. Eminent writer A. N. Wilson challenges this long-held assumption. Contextualizing Darwin and his ideas, he offers a groundbreaking critical look at this revered figure in modern science.In this beautifully written, deeply erudite portrait, Wilson argues that Darwin was not an original scientific thinker, but a ruthless and determined self-promoter who did not credit the many great sages whose ideas he advanced in his book. Furthermore, Wilson contends that religion and Darwinism have much more in common than it would seem, for the acceptance of Darwin''s theory involves a pretty significant leap of faith.Armed with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, Wilson explores how Darwin and his theory were very much a product of their place and time. The "Survival of the Fittest" was really the Survival of Middle Class families like the Darwins—members of a relatively new economic strata who benefited from the rising Industrial Revolution at the expense of the working classes. Following Darwin''s theory, the wretched state of the poor was an outcome of nature, not the greed and neglect of the moneyed classes. In a paradigm-shifting conclusion, Wilson suggests that it remains to be seen, as this class dies out, whether the Darwinian idea will survive, or whether it, like other Victorian fads, will become a footnote in our intellectual history.Brilliant, daring, and ambitious, Charles Darwin explores this legendary man as never before, and challenges us to reconsider our understanding of both Darwin and modern science itself.

A deeply textured and ambitious portrait of the life of Queen Victoria''s husband and his influence on Great Britain, by the author of Victoria."An engrossing biography that continues the author''s long engagement with the Victorian age. . . . [Wilson''s] most striking contribution, though, is a psychologically astute approach to Victoria and Albert, one that results in a persuasive and humane account of their marriage." —Wall Street JournalFor more than six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great Empire at the height of its power. Beside her for more than twenty of those years was the love of her life, her trusted husband and father of their nine children, Prince Albert. But while Victoria is seen as the embodiment of her time, its values, and its paradoxes, it was Prince Albert, A. N. Wilson expertly argues, who was at the vanguard of Victorian Britain''s transformation as a vibrant and extraordinary center of political, technological, scientific, and intellectual advancement. Far more than just the product of his age, Albert was one of its influencers and architects. A composer, engineer, soldier, politician, linguist, and bibliophile, Prince Albert, more than any other royal, was truly a "genius." It is impossible to understand nineteenth century England without knowing the story of this gifted visionary leader, Wilson contends.Albert lived only forty-two years. Yet in that time, he fathered the royal dynasties of Germany, Russia, Spain, and Bulgaria. Through Victoria, Albert and her German advisers pioneered the idea of the modern constitutional monarchy. In this sweeping biography, Wilson demonstrates that there was hardly any aspect of British national life which Albert did not touch. When he was made Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in his late twenties, it was considered as purely an honorific role. But within months, Albert proposed an extensive reorganization of university life in Britain that would eventually be adopted, making it possible to study science, languages, and modern history at British universities—a revolution in education that has changed the world.Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert''s voluminous correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue."Was ''Victorian'' England in fact shaped less by Queen Victoria than by her husband, Prince Albert? This biography makes the case for his underrated genius and lasting influence." —New York Times Book Review, New and Noteworthy

Winner, Plutarch Award for Best Biography: A "marvelous exploration" of Dickens''s life and how it shaped his extraordinarily popular novels (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).An exceedingly rare talent and great orator, slight of build with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Charles Dickens looked much older than his fifty-eight years when he died—an occasion marked by a crowded funeral at Westminster Abbey, despite his waking wishes for a small affair. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them.Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist''s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer''s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, A.N. Wilson seeks to understand Dickens''s creative genius and enduring popularity. As we follow his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens''s fiction drew from his own experience—a fact he acknowledged. Like Oliver Twist, Dickens suffered a wretched childhood, then grew up to become not only a respectable gentleman but an artist of prodigious popularity. Dickens knew firsthand the poverty and pain his characters endured, including the scandal of a failed marriage.Going beyond standard narrative biography, Wilson brilliantly revisits the wellspring of Dickens''s vast and wild imagination, to reveal at long last why his novels captured the hearts of nineteenth-century readers—and why they continue to resonate today.Illustrated with 30 black-and-white images"Dazzling." —BookPage"Wilson has a number of persuasive ideas about Dickens, whom he sees as not only a conflicted personality but a tragic one, despite his genius for comedy." —The New York Times Book Review"Divulge[s] fascinating contradictions in a man whose work has entertained more generations than any writer could ever dream of." —Los Angeles Times

London has always been much more than a capital city. Its allure is so powerful that the city of monarchs and merchants once prompted Samuel Johnson to declare, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." From the Great Fire of 1666 to the Blitz of World War II, from the building of the Tower of London to the building of Canary Wharf, this prodigious city has long stood at the heart of English national life. At one time the center of the greatest mercantile empire the world has ever known, today London remains one of the major financial hubs of the world, as well as one of the most interesting tourist destinations in the English-speaking world. In this fascinating trip through time and space, celebrated biographer and novelist A. N. Wilson gathers a collection of literature that reflects not merely a sense of place but also the teeming variety of the town that, in its very refusal to be defined, so consistently captures the world's interest. The Norton Book of London views the city through the eyes of writers as various as Dickens and Joe Orton, Dostoyevsky and Lenin, Boswell and Martin Amis. We see criminal London, low life and high life, beggars and politicians, royal families, intellectuals and animals, in a wonderful portrait that celebrates London both past and present. From Black Beauty to Virginia Woolf, Wilson has scoured the shelves for a rich potpourri of the familiar, the diverting, and the strange.

The nineteenth century saw greater changes than any previous era: in the ways nations and societies were organized, in scientific knowledge, and in nonreligious intellectual development. The crucial players in this drama were the British, who invented both capitalism and imperialism and were incomparably the richest, most important investors in the developing world. In this sense, England's position has strong resemblances to America's in the late twentieth century.As one of our most accomplished biographers and novelists, A. N. Wilson has a keen eye for a good story, and in this spectacular work he singles out those writers, statesmen, scientists, philosophers, and soldiers whose lives illuminate so grand and revolutionary a history: Darwin, Marx, Gladstone, Christina Rossetti, Gordon, Cardinal Newman, George Eliot, Kipling. Wilson's accomplishment in this book is to explain through these signature lives how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended.

What are the facts about the life of Jesus, as opposed to the myths, or unprovable tenets of faith surrounding the miracles, death, and resurrection? How and when did Christianity become a separate religion from the Judaism into which Jesus was born? To what extent was his powerover contemporaries political rather than religious? A. N. Wilson's answers to these questions will fascinate readers of every shade of faith or skepticism.

By the end of the nineteenth century, almost all the great writers, artists, and intellectuals had abandoned Christianity, and many abandoned belief in God altogether. This was partly the result of scientific discovery, particularly the work of Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species. (No reader here will soon forget the venomous Oxford debate between Thomas Huxley, brilliant defender of Darwin, and Bishop Wilberforce in 1860.) But as Wilson demonstrates in such fascinatingly diverse lives as those of Gibbon, Kant, Marx, Carlyle, George Eliot, and Sigmund Freud, the doubt about religion had many sources. By 1900, the Church of England, so vastly rich, so politically and socially powerful, could be pronounced spiritually empty, however full its pews might be on a Sunday. Echoes of the "Death of God" could be found practically everywhere: in the revolutionary politics of Garibaldi and Lenin; in the poetry of Tennyson and the novels of Hardy; in the work of Freud, connecting this "death" to our deepest wishes; and in the decline of hierarchical (male) authority and the first stirrings of feminism. Wilson's exquisitely detailed argument reveals the growth of a new imaginative order of unbelief that supplanted organized religion, and left in its wake a devastating sense of loss extending to our own times.

“[A] shimmering and rather wonderful biography.” —The Guardian (London)When Queen Victoria died in 1901, she had ruled for nearly sixty-four years. She was the mother of nine and grandmother of forty-two and the matriarch of royal Europe through her children’s marriages. To many, Queen Victoria is a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, an aging, stiff widow paraded as the figurehead to an all-male imperial enterprise. But in truth, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was one of the most passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional women who ever lived, and the story of her life continues to fascinate.A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources to show us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before. Wilson explores the curious set of circumstances that led to Victoria’s coronation, her strange and isolated childhood, her passionate marriage to Prince Albert and his pivotal influence even after death, and her widowhood and subsequent intimate friendship with her Highland servant John Brown, all set against the backdrop of this momentous epoch in Britain’s history—and the world’s.Born at the very moment of the expansion of British political and commercial power across the globe, Victoria went on to chart a unique course for her country even as she became the matriarch of nearly every great dynasty of Europe. Her destiny was thus interwoven with those of millions of people—not just in Europe but in the ever-expanding empire that Britain was becoming throughout the nineteenth century. The famed queen had a face that adorned postage stamps, banners, statues, and busts all over the known world.Wilson’s Victoria is a towering achievement, a masterpiece of biography by a writer at the height of his powers.*VICTORIA, an eight part miniseries about Queen Victoria is coming to PBS in the Downton Abbey slot, premiering January 8th (trailer). The series stars Jenna Coleman (DR. WHO) as Queen Victoria, Rufus Sewell (PILLARS OF THE EARTH), and Tom Hughes (ABOUT TIME).*From the Trade Paperback edition.

'Engaging ... As each era superimposes itself on the ones before, he conjures up the vanished human history, hidden like the rivers flowing beneath, that is so much part of London's atmosphere' IRISH TIMES'Tantalisingly excellent' ISLINGTON TRIBUNEFrom Chaucer to Churchill, from Pepys to Dickens - the great figures from London's past all make their appearance in A. N. Wilson's affectionate and passionate account of one of the world's greatest cities. Dramatic events are here too - from the Great Fire to the Blitz, from the Peasants' Revolt to Mosley's fascist rallies. But he also looks at the physical transformations of the city: the elegant squares and pleasure gardens of the 18th century; the prodigious expansion of the 19th century and the Railway Age. He moves through the First World War and the 'Big Bang' of the 1980s to celebrate the cosmopolitan nature of modern London while deploring the follies of recent urban planning.

The Wise and Their Works celebrates the 175th anniversary of the Great Exhibition in 2026.The men who inspired the Great Exhibition of 1851 - Henry Cole, Sir Robert Peel and above all Prince Albert himself - were at the centre of an extraordinary combination of manufacturing, commercial skill and political vision which made Victorian Britain an unparalleled success story.In this celebratory book, A. N. Wilson examines the legacy they left behind: their idealistic beliefs about free trade, decency and parliamentary democracy, and their ultimate vision of the human race at peace with prosperity spreading, while poverty and warfare were consigned to history. While their loftier ambitions may not have come to pass, these enterprising men did leave behind a little known but hugely influential organisation, the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, which still supports industry, science and art in the UK.Skillfully delving into this rich and fascinating history, Wilson takes us on a journey into the heart of the progressive Victorian dream, and where it has left us today.

The Wise and Their Works celebrates the 175th anniversary of the Great Exhibition in 2026.The men who inspired the Great Exhibition of 1851 - Henry Cole, Sir Robert Peel and above all Prince Albert himself - were at the centre of an extraordinary combination of manufacturing, commercial skill and political vision which made Victorian Britain an unparalleled success story. In this celebratory book, A. N. Wilson examines the legacy they left behind: their idealistic beliefs about free trade, decency and parliamentary democracy, and their ultimate vision of the human race at peace with prosperity spreading, while poverty and warfare were consigned to history. While their loftier ambitions may not have come to pass, these enterprising men did leave behind a little known but hugely influential organisation, the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, which still supports industry, science and art in the UK.Skillfully delving into this rich and fascinating history, Wilson takes us on a journey into the heart of the progressive Victorian dream, and where it has left us today.

** A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR **'Wild, brilliant and has all the intelligence to rival its subject. Five Stars.' - Frances Wilson, The Telegraph'Exuberant and wide-ranging' - Literary Review'Passionate' - The TimesA spellbinding recreation of Goethe’s life and work from one of our greatest biographers.Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and insatiable curiosity that helped catapult the Western world into the modern era.A N. Wilson tackles the life of Goethe with characteristic wit and verve. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy to his later years as Germany’s most respected elder statesman, Wilson hones in on Goethe’s undying obsession with the work he would spend his entire life writing – Faust. Goethe spent over 60 years writing his retelling of Faust, a strange and powerful work that absorbed all the philosophical questions of his time as well as the revolutions and empires that came and went. It is his greatest work, but as Wilson explores, it is also something much more - it is the myth of how we came to be modern.

Known for his journalism, biographies and novels, A. N. Wilson turns a merciless searchlight on his own early life, his experience of sexual abuse, his catastrophic mistakes in love (sacred and profane) and his life in Grub Street – as a prolific writer. Before he came to London, as one of the “Best of Young British” novelists, and Literary Editor of the Spectator, we meet another A. N. Wilson. 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, Katherine Duncan-Jones, the renowned Shakespearean scholar. The book begins with his heart-torn present-day visits to Katherine, now for decades his ex-wife, who has slithered into the torments of dementia. At every turn of this reminiscence, Wilson is baffled by his earlier self – whether he is flirting with unsuitable lovers or with the idea of the priesthood. His chapter on the High Camp seminary which he attended in Oxford is among the funniest in the book. 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. The princesses, dons, paedophiles and journos who cross the pages are as sharply drawn as figures in Wilson''s early comic fiction. But there is also a tenderness here, in his evocation of those whom he has loved, and hurt, the most.