Angus Wilson

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

No Laughing Matter

Towards the end of Angus Wilson's life his short stories were entombed in a collected volume. By way of signifying the corpus was sadly complete that made sense but it didn't do justice to the importance and quality of his work in this medium. Three volumes of short stories were published - The Wrong Set, Such Darling Dodos and A Bit Off the Map. Faber Finds are reissuing these original selections. Angus Wilson made his initial reputation by his short stories, The Wrong Set and Such Darling Dodos being his first two published books, appearing in 1949 and 1950 respectively. When reviewing Such Darling Dodos C. P. Snow perceptively wrote, 'Part-bizarre, part-savage and part-maudlin, there is nothing much like it on the contemporary scene. It is rather as though a man of acute sensibility felt left out of the human party, and was surveying it, half-enviously, half-contemptuously, from the corner of the room, determined to strip-off the comfortable pretences and show that this party is pretty horrifying after all ... Sometimes the effect is too mad to be pleasant, sometimes most moving; no one could deny Mr Wilson's gift.' As Margaret Drabble points out in her biography of Angus Wilson (to be reissued in Faber Finds) his stories were in their own way to be as iconoclastic and irreverent as John Osborne's plays were to be. They not so much deserve as demand to be re-read.

And Other Stories

Such Darling Dodos

'Angus Wilson is one of the most enjoyable novelists of the 20th century... Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) analyses a wide range of British society in a complicated plot that offers all the pleasures of detective fiction combined with a steady and humane insight.' Margaret Drabble First published in 1956, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes draws upon perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history: the 'Piltdown Man', finally exposed in 1953. The novel's protagonist is Gerald Middleton, professor of early medieval history and taciturn creature of habit. Separated from his Swedish wife, Gerald is increasingly conscious of his failings. Moreover, some years ago he was involved in an excavation that led to the discovery of a grotesque idol in the tomb of Bishop Eorpwald. The sole survivor of the original excavation party, Gerald harbours a potentially ruinous secret...

The Wrong Set

An Introductory Study of His Novels

Émile Zola

Ben Wilson

The Complete Whale-Watching Handbook is a spectacular celebration of whales, porpoises, and dolphins, and of the immense diversity of opportunities to view these spectacular marine mammals in the wild. Once the stuff of fishermen’s yarns and literary classics, we can all now experience the excitement of an eye-to-eye encounter with a whale, dolphin, or porpoise. This book covers the biology of each creature listed, focusing on the species that can be seen on excursions, the behaviors likely to be encountered, and the nature of the industry. There is also a species guide, followed by a comprehensive region-by-region guide to whale-, dolphin-, or porpoise-watching opportunities worldwide. Up-to-date listings include contact information and a seasonal analysis of the species that can be expected. There are also sections explaining the study of whales, dolphins, and porpoises, examining the impact of whale-watching on whale populations, and offering practical advice on how to view, photograph and enjoy these creatures in the wild.

A Guide to Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises of the World

The Complete Whale-Watching Handbook

Gerald Middleton is a sixty-year-old self-proclaimed failure. Worse than that, he’s "a failure with a conscience." As a young man, he was involved in an archaeological dig that turned up an obscene idol in the coffin of a seventh-century bishop and scandalized a generation. The discovery was in fact the most outrageous archaeological hoax of the century, and Gerald has long known who was responsible and why. But to reveal the truth is to risk destroying the world of cozy compromises that, personally as well as professionally, he has long made his own. One of England's first openly gay novelists, Angus Wilson was a dirty realist who relished the sleaze and scuffle of daily life. Slashingly satirical, virtuosically plotted, and displaying Dickensian humor and nerve, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes features a vivid cast of characters that includes scheming academics and fading actresses, big businessmen toggling between mistresses and wives, media celebrities, hustlers, transvestites, blackmailers, toadies, and even one holy fool. Everyone, it seems, is either in cahoots or in the dark, even as comically intrepid Gerald Middleton struggles to maintain some dignity while digging up a history of lies.

A panoramic novel that stretches from 1912 to 1967 No Laughing Matter is perhaps Angus Wilson's most autobiographical novel. The novel chronicles the end of the bourgeois way of life as seen through the lives of the six Matthews children and their dysfuntional middle-class family. Their parents - Billy Pop and the Countess - are objects of ridicule to their children who vow never to make their mistakes. Quentin, the eldest, is a socialist who adores women. His fervent views, however, become distilled over the years until he transforms into a cynical TV pundit. Gladys, plump and amenable, is unlucky in love and eventually falls for the charms of a crook. Rupert, the handsome actor, has a successful career until he fails to adapt to the changing theatre. Margaret is a brilliant and highly acclaimed novelist but she becomes bitter as her twin Sukey sinks into domestic bliss, while Marcus, the baby of the family, believes that his career is his life. An ambitious and enriching novel No Laughing Matter is an extraordinary work in its depictions of complex family relationships, where it is just as easy to hate as to love and where everyone struggles to be an individual.

Emile Zola

An Angus Wilson revival is underway with the joint publication of Margaret Drabble's biography Angus Wilson and this reissue of Wilson's most brilliant work. First published to phenomenal success in 1956, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is the complex story of a 60-year-old man and the failed elements of his life. Wilson depicts social relationships of English society with an unexpected bittersweet compassion.

W. H. Auden

Evelyn Waugh

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Cyril Connolly

Christopher Sykes

"This sparkling curiosity was inspired by Ian Fleming, who in 1962 had the intriguing idea of asking eminent British writers to comment on the deadly sins for the London Sunday Times. The result is a colletive display of wit, erudition, and common sense, as each author essays his or her assigned vice."--Cover.

The Seven Deadly Sins

It was a decade of rubber plants, Espresso bars and skiffle, of Suez, Teddy boys and Angry Young men, these eight short stories reflect the preoccupations and secrets of the 'respectable' middle class of the fifties.

A Bit Off the Map, and Other Stories

Set in a near future (the novel was first published in 1961 and is set in the period 1970-73), this is Angus Wilson's most allegorical novel, about a doomed attempt to set up a reserve for wild animals. Simon Carter, secretary of the London Zoo, has accepted responsibility and power to the prejudice of his gifts as a naturalist. But power is more than just the complicated game played by the old men at the zoo in the satirical first half of this novel: it lies very near to violence, and in the second half real life inexorably turns to fantasy - the fantasy of war. This tense and at times brutal story offers the healing relationship between man and the natural world as a solution for the power dilemma.

The Old Men at the Zoo

A Play in Three Acts

The Mulberry Bush

Hamo Langmuir flies westwards round the world to examine the effects of his miraculous high-yielding rice, leaving a bleak and impotent existence behind him. His god-daughter, Alexandra Grant, travels with her magic of myths and mysticism along the hippy trail to the East. With a wry wit Angus Wilson brings into focus their separate adventures (Quixotic in Hamo's case, dreamlike in Alexandra's) until the tragic denouement when they meet in Goa. 'Enough thought, comedy, wit, excitement and pathos to keep a dozen less profligate and inventive novelists busy for years.' Francis King, "Observer "

As If by Magic

The World of Charles Dickens

Meg Eliot is the wife of a successful barrister and with that comes a lovely home in Westminster, cocktail parties and a round of charity committees. She is the model wife and her life is one of ease, contentment and privilege. All that changes though when she is suddenly left widowed after a senseless tragedy. Totally alone she is thrust into a struggle to reconstruct her life as she realises that she doesn't really know who she is anymore or who she is supposed to be. The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot follows Meg as she tries to make sense of the realities of life, of living and contemplates the future and its possibilites. What she finds is the ability to survive and, also, the joys of new friendships, new opportunities and perhaps even the idea of a new love. Described by the Daily Telegraph as 'one of fiction's great female creatures', Meg Eliot is a powerful heroine who inspired readers when she first appeared in 1958.

Angus Wilson

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