Wilson, Sir Angus Frank Johnstone 1913-91
English writer

Born in Bexhill, Sussex, the son of an English father and a South African mother, he was educated at Westminster School and Merton College, Oxford. He joined the staff of the British Museum library in London in 1937. He began writing in 1946 and rapidly established a reputation with his brilliant collection of short stories, The Wrong Set (1949), satirizing the more aimless sections of pre-war middle-class society. Such Darling Dodos (1950), For Whom the Cloche Tolls (1953) and A Bit off the Map (1957) added to his prestige, and in 1955 he gave up his office of deputy-superintendent of the British Museum reading room to devote himself solely to writing. The novels Hemlock and After (1952) and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) were both bestsellers, and his later novels, including The Old Men in the Zoo (1961), Late Call (1965) and No Laughing Matter (1967), an ambitious family chronicle of the egocentric Matthews family spanning the 20th century, also received critical acclaim. His later novels include As If By Magic (1973) and Setting the World on Fire (1980). He also wrote one play, The Mulberry Bush (1955). He was Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978.

Bibliography: J L Halio, Angus Wilson (1964)