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A. N. Wilson ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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A. N. Wilson After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World
Farrar Straus Giroux 2005-11-02 0374101981 / 9780374101985 Hardcover Near fine Near fine Hardcover
New. Remainder mark. Near fine in publisher's slightly rubbed quarter bound boards in like dust jacket. Available in our UK premises for prompt dispatch worldwide.In 1924, the British Empire Exhibition--"a huge propaganda exercise"--opened in Wembley to celebrate the stability and permanence of the British Empire, which was at its maximum size at that time. Within 25 years, the British would lose their empire and their place in the world, and be reduced to fighting for their economic survival following World War II. After the Victorians covers the years 1901 through 1953, the year of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In this absorbing work, A.N. Wilson tells the tale of his parents' generation, who witnessed the rapid, bewildering transformation from supreme world power to broken nation within their lifetimes. In doing so, he explores a wide variety of topics, including cultural changes, the population shift from rural to urban areas, the changing role of the aristocracy, imperialism (especially in India), the Asiatic roots of World War I, the rise of the suffragists, and the complex relationship between Britain and the U.S., which Wilson describes as being "like a lot of outwardly successful marriages, an abusive relationship, in which Britain was quite decidedly the junior partner." ... After the Victorians is not a formal history. Rather than cover this era chronologically, Wilson shifts in time, moving smoothly from one subject to another, alternating between wide-angle views and extreme close-ups. He offers broad coverage of military, cultural, political, and economic themes, as well as revealing portraits of politicians, monarchs, generals, journalists, economists, painters, poets, and scientists. Filled with sharp observations and vivid anecdotes, this imaginative and crisply written "portrait of an age" successfully conveys the conflicted emotions of British subjects forced to deal with the loss of their once-mighty empire. --Shawn Carkonen ... Starred Review. Wilson--an estimable novelist and historian--has written a splendid sequel to The Victorians, describing the vanished world of his "parents' generation" between 1901 and 1953. Wilson eschews a rigidly chronological narrative in favor of unveiling a colorful, quirky "portrait of an age." Encompassing everything from high politics through middlebrow pursuits to low culture, this book displays Wilson's magpie-ish talent for the telling detail, the amusing anecdote and the wry observation to delightful effect. Reading it, one feels--with Wilson--a wistful, admiring pang for these post-Victorians, who were born at the zenith of British power and died just as their great empire slipped away. What they left, argues Wilson, was a heritage of defending a peculiarly British form of liberty; what succeeded them was government by a bureaucratic class of "colourless, pushing people controlling others for the sake of control." The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 provides Wilson with a fittingly elegiac conclusion: This "splendid piece of religio-patriotic pageantry" may have justly celebrated "peace, freedom, prosperity," but it was also a "consoling piece of theatre" that temporarily obscured the reality of America's new dominance. 32 pages of illus. (Nov.) Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Price:
7.23 GBP
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A. N. Wilson Betjeman: A Life
Farrar Straus Giroux 2006-11-30 0374111987 / 9780374111984 Hardcover Near fine Near fine Hardcover
New. Remainder mark. Near fine in publisher's cloth in like dust jacket. Available in our UK premises for prompt dispatch worldwide.Certainly Britain's most popular poet since Kipling, John Betjeman (1906–1984) began as the shy son of a London manufacturer, got kicked out of Oxford for not taking his studies seriously and ended up as poet laureate (1972–1984). He also became a celebrity, known across the U.K. for hosting TV programs about travel and architecture, for his campaigns to preserve Victorian buildings and for Summoned by Bells (1960), his bestselling verse account of his childhood and youth. The English admired his unassuming comic persona, his devotion to the Anglican Church, his loyalty (somehow simultaneous, and real) to both aristocrats and Middle England, and his stand on behalf of Victorian values, which modern life seemed to have eroded. This enthusiastic, always readable biography from the prolific English critic Wilson (After the Victorians) follows Betjeman's rise to public acclaim, his sometimes surprising friends and acquaintances (Lord Alfred Douglas, Evelyn Waugh), and his frequently frustrating private affairs: unwilling to either divorce or live with his wife, Betjeman spent decades with a devoted younger mistress. With his sources in hymns and English music-hall comedy, his great causes (Anglican services and Victorian churches) quintessentially, parochially English, Betjeman seems as unlikely an export as Marmite. Whatever American fans he has, however, will be well served by this compact life. 74 b&w illus. (Dec.) Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ... Though two and a half million copies of his Collected Poemshave been sold (a new U.S. paperback of it, including the autobiographical Summoned by Bells,1962, emerges in tandem with this book), John Betjeman (1906-84) is virtually unknown in America. But BBC programs on English architecture aren't big here, and Betjeman owed his enormous home fame to making so many of those so well. Perhaps his TV-fostered popularity fueled his poetry sales; Wilson discloses nothing to warrant thinking so. He says Betjeman's mastery of formal verse, evocation of particular places in Britain, and use of common, though personal, experiences as the matter of his poetry account for its popularity. But Wilson spends relatively little time arguing the poetry's merits. Instead he traces the man's many intense relationships--not often enough sexual, he said late in life--with women and men of remarkable energy, talent, and station (his mistress was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, who herself became a friend). A splendid, poignant biography, despite being peppered with references and assumptions many Americans won't get. Ray Olson Copyright ® American Library Association. All rights reserved
Price:
11.13 GBP
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