#a.n. wilson

[themaninthegreenshirt]

"Being a fogey in those days was, in fact, a form of rebellion against the boring conformity of pop culture — against the unthinking left-wingery of the university common rooms and the bigwigs in the art world, who were obsessed only with being modern and ‘progressive’"

A.N. Wilson

[dianamitford]

“Diana was the best kind of girl: she was always funny, and she was off-hand about her beauty. I sat next to her once when she was wearing a cashmere polo-neck all fluffed up and at one point, in the middle of some anecdote or other, she just carelessly brushed her right breast and de-fluffed it. She was pushing 80 and I thought it was the most sensuous gesture I’d ever seen.”

-A.N. Wilson

[everythingieverloved]

The genuine playfulness and humor in the Queen’s [Victoria] nature was not to find companionable outlet for over twenty years, when she began to befriend John Brown; and it would not know a complete flowering until Disraeli became Prime Minister in 1874. She was so besottedly enraptured by Albert, his beauty and his accomplishments, that she had a far less vivid sense than we do - who know the future - of how much, in this infatuation, of her own freedom and personality she was surrendering. ‘I love him more than I can say,’ she gushed to her uncle Leopold, 'and shall do everything in my power to render the sacrifice he has made (for a sacrifice in my opinion it is) as small as I can.'

“Victoria: A Life,” A. N. Wilson

[trendynewsnow]

Exploring A.N. Wilson's Biography of Goethe: A Fresh Perspective

GOETHE: His Faustian Life By A.N. Wilson At what juncture does a simple aside transform into a mere tangent, a tangent evolve into a digression, and a digression meander into a winding path? Furthermore, at what point does a meander morph into a ramble, a ramble become a circumlocution, and a circumlocution stretch into an excursus, ultimately leading to a cul-de-sac? These contemplative…

Exploring A.N. Wilson's Biography of Goethe: A Fresh Perspective

[nathanschock]

“Now: let us suppose that this God were to become human. What would such a God look like? Very much, I submit, like Jesus of Nazareth. This is the really scary thing that writers like A. N. Wilson never come to grips with; not that Jesus might be identified with a remote, lofty, imaginary being (any fool could see the flaw in that idea), but that God, the real God, the one true God, might actually look like Jesus.”

N.T. Wright, Who Was Jesus?

[bigtickhk]

Robert Gottlieb on Dickensworld — the Great Novelist’s Grand Universe

On the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s death, Robert Gottlieb considers a new book, “The Mystery of Charles Dickens,” by A.N. Wilson, and delivers his own assessment of the author’s legacy.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N. Wilson 

US: https://amzn.to/3nmCbSb 

UK: https://amzn.to/3lsZdWS

[thewhyldeone]

“The history of London is therefore by its very nature a collective history, a kaleidoscope of many stories rather than a book with one author or one theme.  Moreover, because of the size and fluidity of London’s population, because of its constant change and growth, much of its story is hidden from us. Workmen gouging out the earth for a new building can suddenly unearth for us evidence of a lost London, the outlines of an old theater where Shakespeare acted, the conduit of a medical waterway, or paving of Roman times.”

- Excerpt from A.N. Wilson’s London: A Biography

[anditendshowyoudexpect]

started A.N. Wilson's Victoria: A Life

jfc, about why go on for twenty minutes about how the fact that Queen Victoria's journals were heavily edited by her children does not necessarily mean there was something racy or even interesting in them? okay, i get it, her children were prim pricks and wanted her to be remembered as one too, you said it, move on to the racy parts

i don't know if it bodes well for me that i'm already annoyed