A N Wilson Interviewed by Suzi Feay

Novelist and biographer A N Wilson turns the spotlight on his own life as he talks about his early years, his experiences of sexual abuse, his catastrophic mistakes in love and his life as a prolific writer.

Wilson, the son of a managing director of Wedgwood, describes those early years, including his treatment at the hands of grotesque teachers at his first boarding school, his experience of Oxford dons, including the Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones,  whom he married at the age of only 20, and his early flirtation with the priesthood. He describes his unsuccessful attempts to become an academic, his subsequent success as a man of letters and his encounters with princesses, dons, paedophiles, and journalists.

Wilson is a celebrated novelist and biographer. His novel, Winnie and the Wolf, was longlisted for the Booker. His non-fiction work includes Dante in Love, Tolstoy, The Victorians, and C S Lewis: A Biography. His The Mystery of Charles Dickens is currently being dramatised for television. Here he talks to journalist and reviewer for the FT Suzi Feay.