A.N. Wilson 
Bertie: A Life of Edward VII, by Jane Ridley
This book deserves to be named in the same breath as those two great classics of royal biography, Roger Fulford’s Royal Dukes and James Pope-Hennessy’s Queen Mary. It shares with… Read more
Good queen, bad subject
There is a paradox at the heart of all books about the Queen. The very thing which makes her such a successful constitutional monarch is what makes her an impossible… Read more
Bookends: Shady people in the sun
Carla McKay’s The Folly of French Kissing (Gibson Square, £7.99) is a very funny, cynical tale about British expatriates in the Languedoc. The blurb says ‘Toujours Provence meets Miss Marple’,… Read more
Rotten, vicious times
A.N. Wilson recalls the worst decade of recent history and the death throes of Old England There was a distressing news story the other day about a man who did… Read more
A.N. Wilson
Some time in the olden days, an Irishman called St Piran took the trouble to float over the ocean on a millstone and land in Cornwall, with the purpose of… Read more
Helping our unbelief
Over 125 of the 320 pages in this book are either blank, or taken up with black-and-white illustrations, of subjects as various as Madonna and her former husband Guy Ritchie,… Read more
In a class of his own
Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School captures the hilarity and pathos of an eccentric headmaster and the unusual establishment he founded in Kensington in the Thirties. A.N.Wilson introduces us… Read more
Worshippers at the high altar
What grabbed me about Newman and His Contemporaries was a puff from an Australian writer quoted on the back. This book, it said, ‘is like a Victorian Dance to the… Read more
The way to dusty death
Beryl Bainbridge’s last novel is a haunting echo of her own final years, according to A. N. Wilson Some writers die years before bodily demise. They lose their grip. In… Read more
When wailing is appropriate
This is a strange exercise. It is a commonplace book of quotations from great authors, assembled by the philosopher A. C. Grayling. The extracts from the great books, how- ever,… Read more
The man mountain of Fleet Street
A. N. Wilson has a queasy feeling that he won’t be re-reading the works of G. K. Chesterton for a while Yet another book on Chesterton! William Oddie is only… Read more
Perchance to dream
This book reads like an interesting after- dinner conversation between intelligent friends. That said, it is a rambling conversation, and although it is extremely entertaining, it does not add up… Read more
Family favourites
Because Deborah Devonshire’s journalism has nearly always made me laugh, and because she seems like one of the jollier aunts in P. G. Wodehouse — an Aunt Dahlia, not an… Read more
Sun Myung Moon among the stars
Where would the popes, presidents and princesses of the world be without Paul Johnson, the former editor of the New Statesman, and much loved columnist in this and other periodicals?… Read more
Mystery of the empty tomb
John Henry Newman was an electrifying personality who has attracted numerous biographers and commentators. John Cornwell, in his excellent guided tour around this well-ploughed field, recalls the young woman in… Read more
The greatest puzzle of all
Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, is one the best works written in English in my lifetime. Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, is one the best works written in… Read more
Before she was a novelist
‘It’s hard in letters quite to hit the mean between being earnest and sounding damn silly’ — as Iris Murdoch admits on page 205 of this book. ‘It’s hard in… Read more
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