Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson, CBE 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, to an English father, William Johnstone-Wilson, and South African mother, Maude, of a wealthy merchant family of Durban. Wilson's grandfather had served in a prestigious Scottish army regiment, and owned an estate in Dumfriesshire, where William Johnstone-Wilson was raised, and where he subsequently lived. 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. A wearer of large, brightly coloured bow-ties, he was one of the "famous homosexuals" at Bletchley. The work situation was stressful and led to a nervous breakdown, for which he was treated by Rolf-Werner Kosterlitz. A Wren, Dorothy Robertson, was taught traffic analysis by him and another instructor. She recalled him as: He returned to the Museum after the end of the War, and it was there that he met Tony Garrett, who was to be his companion for the rest of his life. Wilson's first publication was a collection of short stories, The Wrong Set, followed quickly by the daring novel Hemlock and After, which was a great success, prompting invitations to lecture in Europe. He worked as a reviewer, and in 1955 he resigned from the British Museum to write full-time and moved to Suffolk. He was instrumental in getting Colin Wilson's first novel published in 1956 and from 1957 he gave lectures further afield, in Japan, Switzerland, Australia, and the USA. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1968 New Year Honours, and received many literary honours in succeeding years. He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1980 Birthday Honours, and was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 1982 to 1988. His remaining years were affected by ill health, and he died of a stroke at a nursing home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on 31 May 1991, aged 77. His writing, which has a strongly satirical vein, expresses his concern with preserving a liberal humanistic outlook in the face of fashionable doctrinaire temptations. Several of his works were adapted for television. He was Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978, and jointly helped to establish their creative writing course at masters level in 1970, which was then a groundbreaking initiative in the United Kingdom. His medals, then in private ownership, were shown on the BBC Television programme Antiques Roadshow in August 2018.
