CONFESSIONS

A sometimes rueful, sometimes celebratory memoir by the prolific British writer.

"Over fifty books published, and probably millions of words in the newspapers,” writes Wilson, an author who, his critics charged, “wrote with too much ease.” Pondering the past as a man in his early 70s, the author finds regret at certain roads not taken and certain relationships broken on the shoals. His father, he recalls, was a director of the Wedgwood china company and “a designer of distinctive brilliance” who was less successful as a family man. For himself, Wilson recalls the brutalities of school, where, he shrugs, “at least the sexual abuse was relatively minor.” (Others, he allows, had different views on the matter.) Wilson works a number of themes, including indecisiveness and inconstancy, even as he meets and beats every deadline thrown at him. His passing notes on books and writers will be of great interest to every student of modern British literature. His recollections of the travails of Christopher Tolkien, anguished son cast deep into the shadows of his Lord of the Rings author father, are worth the price of admission alone. So, too, is Wilson’s account of how a publisher friend turned down Watership Down and then tried to make up for the gaffe by having Wilson write a novel in which “I should try to do for stray cats what Richard Adams had done for the rabbits of Berkshire.” It didn’t work. Anglo-Catholic and sometimes arch, Wilson is also a delightfully close observer of the passing scene, as when, at a London bar, he sees “a lower-middle-class imitation of Jacqueline Onassis”—none other than Christine Keeler, the real-life model for the politically ruinous prostitute in his novel Scandal. Though it ends on a thud, Wilson’s yarn has much to recommend.

A readable, often entertaining summation of a life of hard work and second thoughts.