ANGUS WILSON: 1 (WRITERS AND THEIR WORK)

Sir angus wilson shot to fame in the late 1940’s – his first stories were greeted by sean o’faolain and evelyn waugh alike with delight. he was championed at once as an odd realist providing new social maps of post-war england – v s pritchett was to see him as revising the conventional picture of english character, and recovering “broadness” without losing humanity. he has many faces as a writer. if he inherits the comic dickensian novel of social depth and density, he also marries this to a recognisably modern anxiety and insecurity about the ‘self’. wilson’s major books often concern ‘creative breakdown’: they depict people who undergo a crisis and/or collapse of self-belief, and then have to find the courage to invent themselves anew.