About Angus Wilson
Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson (11 August 1913 – 31 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was one of England's first openly gay authors. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature. == Biography == Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, "much the youngest" sixth son of English father, William Thomas Frank Johnstone-Wilson (1865-1938), and South African mother, Maude (née Caney; 1867-1929), daughter of a wealthy jeweller of Durban. Wilson's grandfather had served in a prestigious Scottish army regiment, and owned an estate in Dumfriesshire, where William- or "Willie"- Johnstone-Wilson (despite being born at Haymarket) was raised, and where he subsequently lived. Willie Johnstone-Wilson was "a feckless father of Dickensian or Joycean dimensions", represented in his son's writings among "the shabby-genteel improvisers that populate the Wilsonian floating world". He had been a "stage door johnnie" who provided his family with "a curious hybrid of need and privilege" and "pecuniary embarrassments", the family being "downwardly mobile", Willie "piloting them unsteadily in that direction". Wilson was educated at Westminster School and Merton College, Oxford, and in 1937 became a librarian in the British Museum's Department of Printed Books, working on the new General Catalogue. Previous employment included tutoring, catering, and co-managing a restaurant with his brother. During World War II, he worked in the Naval section at the code-breaking establishment, Bletchley Park, translating Italian Naval codes.
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