Setting the World on Fire - Softcover

Wilson, Angus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571248977 ISBN 13: 9780571248971

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2011

Synopsis

At the end of the Second World War Piers and his younger brother Tom are growing up at Tothill House, the family home with its magnificent baroque hall by Vanbrugh. Tom is the pluckier of the two, because pluck means overcoming one's fears. Piers has no such fears to overcome; he is ambitious. As the post-war years witness a division in their aspirations and their destinies, the two brothers strive to achieve their own means of setting the world on fire. With rich characterization, virtuoso scenes of comedy, and sparkling dialogue, Setting the World On Fire provides a brilliant anatomy of post-war English society from 1948 to 1969. 'It is superb entertainment and social criticism but it is also a poem about the fire in human beings ... A moving and disturbing book and a very superior piece of art.' Anthony Burgess, Observer.

About this title

About the Author

Sir Angus Wilson CBE was born in Bexhill, Sussex, in 1913, the youngest of six boys, and grew up in a series of residential hotels after his family ran through their inheritance. After Westminster School and Oxford University, he joined the British Museum Library. In World War II, he worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, where the stress caused a breakdown and he took up writing as therapy. After the war, he returned to the British Museum and replaced 300,000 books that had been destroyed. Following the success of his second novel, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956), he gave up his job to dedicate time to writing. Homosexuality was still illegal, yet Wilson always wrote freely about his world; some libraries refused to stock his novels. Wilson became a Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978, and jointly with Malcolm Bradbury, established their ground-breaking MA in Creative Writing in 1970. He always insisted that his life companion Tony Garrett was acknowledged as his partner (Garrett was fired from his job as a probation officer). He and Tony left England for France in 1985, but Wilson's illness forced their return. The Royal Literary Fund supported Wilson in his final years. He died in 1991.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571248977
• ISBN 13: 9780571248971
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304