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Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
The grotesque idol discovered in Bishop Eorpwald's tomb has scandalized, mystified and inspired a whole generation of scholars. Gerard Middleton, one of the members of the excavation, keeps a further, more disreputable secret...
Angus Wilson's ambitious novel is the story of a man for whom life and letters have lost their meaning. Separated from his sentimental Danish wife, Gerald is acutely aware of the void at the centre of his existence. But the world is reaching out to reclaim him...
Angus Wilson's ambitious novel is the story of a man for whom life and letters have lost their meaning. Separated from his sentimental Danish wife, Gerald is acutely aware of the void at the centre of his existence. But the world is reaching out to reclaim him...
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
34 people are currently reading
1231 people want to read
About the author
Angus Wilson
90 books41 followersSir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson, KBE (11 August 1913 – 31 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. 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.
Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to an English father and South African mother. He 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. During World War II, he worked in the Naval section Hut 8 at the code-breaking establishment, Bletchley Park, translating Italian Naval codes.
The work situation was stressful and led to a nervous breakdown, for which he was treated by Rolf-Werner Kosterlitz. He returned to the Museum after the end of the War, and it was there that he met Tony Garrett (born 1929), 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 (1949), 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 (although his financial situation did not justify doing so) and moved to Suffolk.
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 (CBE) in 1968, and received many literary honours in succeeding years. He was knighted in 1980, and was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 1983 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.
Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to an English father and South African mother. He 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. During World War II, he worked in the Naval section Hut 8 at the code-breaking establishment, Bletchley Park, translating Italian Naval codes.
The work situation was stressful and led to a nervous breakdown, for which he was treated by Rolf-Werner Kosterlitz. He returned to the Museum after the end of the War, and it was there that he met Tony Garrett (born 1929), 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 (1949), 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 (although his financial situation did not justify doing so) and moved to Suffolk.
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 (CBE) in 1968, and received many literary honours in succeeding years. He was knighted in 1980, and was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 1983 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
October 28, 2019
What a bad year for giving up novels! What is happening? Is it the sad inevitable decline of my powers of concentration due to extreme old age and a poor diet? Perhaps it’s just that I keep forgetting where I left my book and just shrug and start another one? Maybe it’s the fault of Berthold Brecht, Alfred Doblin, Henry James, ee cummings, Edmund White, Annie Proulx and Gore Vidal – a pretty star-studded list but those fools couldn’t keep my attention. Yeah, it must be them, they should have written better books.
Well, I think there’s a real reason. Life in Britain has become more interesting, more plot-driven, with more corkscrew twists and a huge vivid cast of characters, than these novels. It’s the ongoing Brexit show! I must quickly explain – Brexit is just the name we give here to a national nervous breakdown. As the Joker once said “I have given a name to my pain, it is Batman” and now British people (natural jokers) say “we have given a name to our madness, it is Brexit”.
So I have been glued to all the greased piglet unexpectedness and the soapy operatic qualities of the political shenanigans all year. I have been distracted. Even writing this my eye is on the clock – in 50 minutes there will be a heated discussion about today’s flextension granted by Donald Tusk and the battle between Boris and the opposition. It goes like this at the moment:
Jeremy Corbyn and all the other opposition leaders : We need to rid us of this hard right government that is lashing the people with scorpions and rendering the fields barren. Give us an election now, O Lord!
Boris (the Prime Minister) : Let’s have an election!
Jeremy Corbyn and all the other opposition leaders: No! O Prince of Lies, think you that we fall for your tricks like blushing milkmaids? Ye shall not have an election! Hie thee back to Number Ten!
That’s a pretty odd situation all right – Boris can’t do anything, he has no majority in parliament and they keep outvoting him, but he can’t get an election to try to get a majority either. This is because the opposition know very well that he would win an election. Not magnificently, but enough. So they keep him prisoner in Downing Street, a bird in a gilded cage. It’s a siege situation. “You’re surrounded – throw out the Brexit and come out with your hands up!” “No – you coppers will have to come in and get me but you’ll never see the EU alive.”
No one can predict how long this craziness will go on for. Could be months, years even. Meanwhile government has ground to a halt, along with all rational thought.
Now this is what I call Anglo-Saxon attitudes! And a few Celtic ones too! My favourite quote from recent months was when Jeremy Corbyn was warning that a no-deal Brexit would allow an avalanche of chlorinated chickens from the USA. Boris was on his feet in a trice, gesticulating and shouting “There’s only one chlorinated chicken I can see in this House and he’s on that bench over there, the leader of the opposition!”. Ha, brilliant.
This 1956 novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is a social satire about one extended upper middle class family who do nothing but bitch about each other and maunder about the past. Angus Wilson wrote one of my all time favourite short stories, “Raspberry Jam”. He’s a very good writer in the acid-tongued Evelyn Waugh manner, but he isn’t very funny, unlike Evelyn. And you would have to send DNA samples of this novel off to the laboratory to find out if there is a plot. Maybe there is, I could not detect one after a couple of hundred pages. There were so many conversations where you had to know that the guy talking was the father of the son who is having an affair with the other son’s former mistress in order for the conversation to make sense. But I would much rather think about whether it would be a good idea for a snap election so that when Labour inevitably loses they can finally get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and find somebody sensible to lead the party. Wait, I have to go – the 765th political discussion show of the year is just starting on BBC. Can't miss that.
Well, I think there’s a real reason. Life in Britain has become more interesting, more plot-driven, with more corkscrew twists and a huge vivid cast of characters, than these novels. It’s the ongoing Brexit show! I must quickly explain – Brexit is just the name we give here to a national nervous breakdown. As the Joker once said “I have given a name to my pain, it is Batman” and now British people (natural jokers) say “we have given a name to our madness, it is Brexit”.
So I have been glued to all the greased piglet unexpectedness and the soapy operatic qualities of the political shenanigans all year. I have been distracted. Even writing this my eye is on the clock – in 50 minutes there will be a heated discussion about today’s flextension granted by Donald Tusk and the battle between Boris and the opposition. It goes like this at the moment:
Jeremy Corbyn and all the other opposition leaders : We need to rid us of this hard right government that is lashing the people with scorpions and rendering the fields barren. Give us an election now, O Lord!
Boris (the Prime Minister) : Let’s have an election!
Jeremy Corbyn and all the other opposition leaders: No! O Prince of Lies, think you that we fall for your tricks like blushing milkmaids? Ye shall not have an election! Hie thee back to Number Ten!
That’s a pretty odd situation all right – Boris can’t do anything, he has no majority in parliament and they keep outvoting him, but he can’t get an election to try to get a majority either. This is because the opposition know very well that he would win an election. Not magnificently, but enough. So they keep him prisoner in Downing Street, a bird in a gilded cage. It’s a siege situation. “You’re surrounded – throw out the Brexit and come out with your hands up!” “No – you coppers will have to come in and get me but you’ll never see the EU alive.”
No one can predict how long this craziness will go on for. Could be months, years even. Meanwhile government has ground to a halt, along with all rational thought.
Now this is what I call Anglo-Saxon attitudes! And a few Celtic ones too! My favourite quote from recent months was when Jeremy Corbyn was warning that a no-deal Brexit would allow an avalanche of chlorinated chickens from the USA. Boris was on his feet in a trice, gesticulating and shouting “There’s only one chlorinated chicken I can see in this House and he’s on that bench over there, the leader of the opposition!”. Ha, brilliant.
This 1956 novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is a social satire about one extended upper middle class family who do nothing but bitch about each other and maunder about the past. Angus Wilson wrote one of my all time favourite short stories, “Raspberry Jam”. He’s a very good writer in the acid-tongued Evelyn Waugh manner, but he isn’t very funny, unlike Evelyn. And you would have to send DNA samples of this novel off to the laboratory to find out if there is a plot. Maybe there is, I could not detect one after a couple of hundred pages. There were so many conversations where you had to know that the guy talking was the father of the son who is having an affair with the other son’s former mistress in order for the conversation to make sense. But I would much rather think about whether it would be a good idea for a snap election so that when Labour inevitably loses they can finally get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and find somebody sensible to lead the party. Wait, I have to go – the 765th political discussion show of the year is just starting on BBC. Can't miss that.
February 13, 2013
Anthony Burgess blurbed that this was one of the five greatest novels of the [20th] century! I didn't see it, myself.
I had no idea what the book was about when I bought it. I was sucked in by that NYRB cover and John Tenniel's delightful Through the Looking Glass illustration. Once inside, I was pleased to find that the story took place within academia's sordid walls and involved an archeological excavation - a priapic wooden fertility idol is found in the tomb of a 7th century Christian bishop, but at the end of the book's first section we find out the idol is a hoax, placed there by an acquaintance of the protagonist, Gerald Middleton. Except this turns out not to take up huge amounts of the novel. Instead, we're led through endless set pieces and conversations involving the extended Middleton family and their mistresses, acquaintances, and a bevy of low class homosexual men. So really this ends up being a comic novel about a large, dysfunctional family. It was hard to get through. I liked the font, but the font was tiny. 350 pages seemed more like 500 pages. Out of nearly 50 characters, there were maybe one or two I found likable. I know this isn't supposed to matter. It's the rube's way of reading literature! But don't you have to find something to grasp onto, if the other elements of the novel are failing to satisfy?
There was one character I found delightful. His name is Armand Sarthe and he's introduced with about 5% of the book left. Our protagonist, Gerald Middleton, is an upper class academic. At a party thrown by his French daughter-in-law Marie-Hélène, Gerald has M. Sarthe, a man who writes distinctly less scholarly books, foisted upon him:
As he took a glass of champagne from one of the hired waiters, he saw with horror that Marie-Hélène was leading a tall, grey-haired Frenchman towards him. It was as he feared, the distinguished author of Les causes célèbres du moyen âge, Armand Sarthe. Oh well, he thought, the chap must be a cynical journalist who's written the stuff for money; he may well be quite a pleasant fellow in real life. But when Marie-Hélène moved away in grave deference to the esoteric bonds of scholarship that united them, M. Sarthe's first words were not promising.
'Woman,' he said, and he waved his hand towards Marie-Hélène's sharp shoulder-blades protruding uglily above the flowing folds of her crimson gown, 'defies the historian's art. We can catch her differences, the change in her art. We can catch for a moment the turn of Aspasia's head as she delights Pericles with her wit. We can bring to life again the harsh note in Xanthippe's scolding voice. We can turn with horror from the cruelty in Messalina's eyes or with shame for ourselves from the innocent love with which Heloise looks at her lover. We can stand with the Maid as she scorns her judges. But the essential woman - the woman that was there in the caves at Lascaux and is here in this room today - eludes us. Do you agree?'
Gerald had some difficulty in following the rapid French, so he contented himself by saying 'Yes.'
October 18, 2008
It is clear that the author had big ambitions for this book. One sign is the cast list at the beginning. There are numerous references to the excavation at Melpham, and the lengthy appendix on this subject must mean it is very important. Right? So it's strange to find it isn't. The pagan artefact found in the Christian tomb had either been placed there at the time or later. It turns out to have been later, as the joke of an embittered individual. But really, all this creaking apparatus is of no real significance. What signifies are the attitudes adopted towards the find in the burial, particularly that of Gerald, Professor Middleton. He has suspected the truth for years and done nothing about it.
It is amusing to note the discussion concerning whether the inclusion of a pagan artefact in the tomb of a Christian churchman might be considered 'un-English'. This is very odd indeed because the real question, surely, is whether it is un-Christian. And this is just one of many instances where the author's obsession with England and the English make the book tedious. It comes up time and again in unexpected, unjustified and uninteresting ways. For example, take the first two pages referring to John Middleton, who clearly writes for a national paper: 'in this overgoverned England of ours', 'everyone of us in England today,' ' a friend of England.' And as the book starts, so it continues. Chapter Two (starting page 233) is an astonishing assault on the un-english reader: 'so very English', 'beloved of his English colleagues', 'I'm very English', 'three elderly English scholars with no real communion of feeling except their nationality', (good one that, when there is no such thing as English nationality), 'it's my chauvinistic pride as an Englishman'. You can say that again, Angus.
It's really quite sad when you consider the good people England has produced who didn't feel impelled to go on like this. The Angles and the Saxons certainly didn't.
The flip side of this rabid pro-Englishness may be found in some of the other characters. Gerald's wife is something of a basket case so she isn't English, she's Danish. More seriously, John Middleton is gay and he has a gay friend, Larrie, who is not only gay but exceedingly unpleasant and manipulative.. Guess what? He's Irish. The author even has him say 'sure' at one point. The character of Yves Houdet is, if anything, even worse, and as we can tell by the name, he's about as un-English as you can get. Gerald: 'he detested the flashy smartness of such Latin womanizers.' (p238). I get the impression Angus had little idea of the Scots, but he still finds room for a quick stereotype: 'Now little Hilda Ferguson, fiercely Scots with her flaming red hair and shrill soap-box voice, rose to express her agreement . . . ' page 41. Though she does come up with the first chapter of the History he's editing and it looked 'most interesting' (p273). Needless to say it concerns England, namely, 'the influence of the Crusades on English social life.' So we subtract the Irish, the Latins, the Scots, the Danes, the Welsh don't exist – and what are we are left with? The English!
And what sort of a person is this Gerald anyway? He runs a wife and a mistress for many years, so he's really fastidious. Doesn't get round to asking his wife till at least twenty years after the event what really occurred when his daughter Kay's hand got burned! But to cut to the important things: 'Despite his English ironic temperament, he had not got the usual English worship of the sense of the ridiculous.' (p267).
There is also some reason to believe that English social class divisions were very important to Angus, hence the music hall depictions of Mrs Salad, Vin Salad, and Frank Rammage. And there are other characters in this category.
So is the book any good? It is at its best where it deals with the relationships between the main characters, by which I mean the main middle and upper class characters. The tensions between John and Robin Middleton, and Kay of the damaged hand and her husband Donald – all that is quite good and keeps the reader's interest. Though I did feel that Dollie Portway, Gerald's ex-mistress, was a bit over the top in the jolly-hockey-sticks stakes.
But whatever the inflated machinery Wilson provides to support the book, it amounts to a lot less than he thought.
It is amusing to note the discussion concerning whether the inclusion of a pagan artefact in the tomb of a Christian churchman might be considered 'un-English'. This is very odd indeed because the real question, surely, is whether it is un-Christian. And this is just one of many instances where the author's obsession with England and the English make the book tedious. It comes up time and again in unexpected, unjustified and uninteresting ways. For example, take the first two pages referring to John Middleton, who clearly writes for a national paper: 'in this overgoverned England of ours', 'everyone of us in England today,' ' a friend of England.' And as the book starts, so it continues. Chapter Two (starting page 233) is an astonishing assault on the un-english reader: 'so very English', 'beloved of his English colleagues', 'I'm very English', 'three elderly English scholars with no real communion of feeling except their nationality', (good one that, when there is no such thing as English nationality), 'it's my chauvinistic pride as an Englishman'. You can say that again, Angus.
It's really quite sad when you consider the good people England has produced who didn't feel impelled to go on like this. The Angles and the Saxons certainly didn't.
The flip side of this rabid pro-Englishness may be found in some of the other characters. Gerald's wife is something of a basket case so she isn't English, she's Danish. More seriously, John Middleton is gay and he has a gay friend, Larrie, who is not only gay but exceedingly unpleasant and manipulative.. Guess what? He's Irish. The author even has him say 'sure' at one point. The character of Yves Houdet is, if anything, even worse, and as we can tell by the name, he's about as un-English as you can get. Gerald: 'he detested the flashy smartness of such Latin womanizers.' (p238). I get the impression Angus had little idea of the Scots, but he still finds room for a quick stereotype: 'Now little Hilda Ferguson, fiercely Scots with her flaming red hair and shrill soap-box voice, rose to express her agreement . . . ' page 41. Though she does come up with the first chapter of the History he's editing and it looked 'most interesting' (p273). Needless to say it concerns England, namely, 'the influence of the Crusades on English social life.' So we subtract the Irish, the Latins, the Scots, the Danes, the Welsh don't exist – and what are we are left with? The English!
And what sort of a person is this Gerald anyway? He runs a wife and a mistress for many years, so he's really fastidious. Doesn't get round to asking his wife till at least twenty years after the event what really occurred when his daughter Kay's hand got burned! But to cut to the important things: 'Despite his English ironic temperament, he had not got the usual English worship of the sense of the ridiculous.' (p267).
There is also some reason to believe that English social class divisions were very important to Angus, hence the music hall depictions of Mrs Salad, Vin Salad, and Frank Rammage. And there are other characters in this category.
So is the book any good? It is at its best where it deals with the relationships between the main characters, by which I mean the main middle and upper class characters. The tensions between John and Robin Middleton, and Kay of the damaged hand and her husband Donald – all that is quite good and keeps the reader's interest. Though I did feel that Dollie Portway, Gerald's ex-mistress, was a bit over the top in the jolly-hockey-sticks stakes.
But whatever the inflated machinery Wilson provides to support the book, it amounts to a lot less than he thought.
March 13, 2012
The star of the show is estranged wife Inge. She's a Northern European dream ... if she didn't invent the Moomins, then it must have been someone very like her. I love that she's happy to be nice to her son's thieving labourer, but is all hysterical when anyone suggests that it isn't just "Radio Times" and cups of cocoa when they climb into bed together. I love her social democracy and her snobbishness. I love how infuriating and exasperating she is. I really love her little deals with God.
But, then I loved everyone else too. The scene at the Café Royal should win an award. Gerald takes his family for his young daughter's birthday lunch. But his mistress, "Aunty Dollie", is there. Alone. Drunk. I remember being so scared of drunk adults when I was a kid.
But, then I loved everyone else too. The scene at the Café Royal should win an award. Gerald takes his family for his young daughter's birthday lunch. But his mistress, "Aunty Dollie", is there. Alone. Drunk. I remember being so scared of drunk adults when I was a kid.
September 27, 2017
3.5 stars
"Part of the importance of Angus Wilson's work, then and now, was that he was the first respectable English novelist to bring the connections between the public bourgeois world of art, family, government, and property and the clandestine homosexual world of desire and danger together in a Great Tradition novel -- showing by his tone and style they were all one world and thereby conferring respectability on what had previously been risqué." (From the introduction by Jane Smiley)
"Part of the importance of Angus Wilson's work, then and now, was that he was the first respectable English novelist to bring the connections between the public bourgeois world of art, family, government, and property and the clandestine homosexual world of desire and danger together in a Great Tradition novel -- showing by his tone and style they were all one world and thereby conferring respectability on what had previously been risqué." (From the introduction by Jane Smiley)
December 22, 2011
The hype is that this book is one of the 20th C classic British comedies, which only increased my overall disappointment as I plowed through page by page of not funny acid. I don't know if other readers have this experience but this is a book where I constantly looked at the page numbers and did the mental arithmetic to calculate what fraction of completion I had reached and how much trudging remained (on the plus side I did spend more time practicing my fractions).
The story of itself of a historian with a troubled conscience and uneasy relations with his family and his wife could be really funny and moving but was ruined by the vapid stereotypical highly stylized nastiness that every single character displays. For my sins I did find Yves amusing and in the the last 30 pages I did find some connection to Gerald which made the very last part of the book slightly absorbing. I do find comedies of the grotesque like this, with the notable exception of Saki and Waugh, age very poorly.
The story of itself of a historian with a troubled conscience and uneasy relations with his family and his wife could be really funny and moving but was ruined by the vapid stereotypical highly stylized nastiness that every single character displays. For my sins I did find Yves amusing and in the the last 30 pages I did find some connection to Gerald which made the very last part of the book slightly absorbing. I do find comedies of the grotesque like this, with the notable exception of Saki and Waugh, age very poorly.
November 22, 2024
Angus Wilson seems to be slightly overlooked these days, which is a pity. Published in 1956, this comic novel revolves around an eminent professor of Medieval history, Gerald Middleton, and his colleagues and family. Many decades before, in 1912, Middleton was the guest at Melpham House when the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon bishop, together, rather scandously, with a pagan fertility figure, was discovered by Middleton's mentor Professor Stokesay. Gerald has long suspected that the placing of the effigy in the bishop's tomb was a practical joke played on his father by the Professor's son, a poet killed in the Great War. But the past refuses to remain buried. A veritable gallery of grotesques, notably the almost psychopathically unpleasant Professor Clun; Middleton's estranged wife, the blonde, doll-like Inge; and the strutting, vainglorious Yves. A delight.
February 16, 2021
Since reading D. J. Taylor’s The Lost Girls: Love and Literature in Wartime London, I’ve been fascinated with Sonia Brownell, Cyril Connolly’s editorial assistant at Horizon, who married George Orwell on his deathbed. She has been proposed as the model for Julia in 1984 and also inspired other characters in postwar English literature. I liked her performance as Ada Leintwardine the publisher’s secretary in Anthony Powell’s Books Do Furnish a Room, and now I’ve caught up with her avatar Elvira Portway in Angus Wilson’s Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. Sonia discovered Wilson, first publishing one of his stories in Horizon, and though some readers find Elvira unpleasant, I quite liked her. “Elvira Portway was exactly gorgeous – tall, dark, voluptuous in the Roman style … and yet there was about her a quality of naivety that suggested the English rose. A nice English girl’s upbringing, of course, is guaranteed to withstand the impact of many years’ persistent Bohemianism, or rather it controls and makes its own Bohemianism. It was not so much that Elvira’s devotion to the arts was insincere, but rather that it brought with it something of the fresh keenness of the hockey-field.” (That phrase assured I’d love her.) She tells how she spent the previous evening: “We were discussing Malraux … There was an American there who knew him in his Commie days. And Hardy was back from New York with some frightfully funny stories about the New Criticism boys.” The novel was published in 1956, and ‘New Criticism’ was then indeed hot controversial stuff in English departments, though it’s hard to imagine anything very funny about Brooks and Warren. By the time I started Anglo-Saxon Attitudes and DNFed as an undergraduate, New Criticism had cooled off and a friend from Yale brought news that Northrop Frye was currently the rage. Angus Wilson was then a major contemporary writer. Now he is totally forgotten, but he spent a term before my time at the University of Iowa and so I had the pleasure to encounter Margaret Drabble (then my favourite contemporary writer) when she was researching his biography). In an interview whilst at Iowa, Wilson told how he had to assign this novel to his class because it was the only one still in print then, and that it was based on the Piltdown Man hoax.
Some readers have complained that there is scarcely a plot, and I’d agree that the pagan artefact in the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon saint is largely a McGuffin to allow the display of an array of characters from distinguished professors to rent-boys and retired lavatory attendants with Dickensian names like Mrs Salad. From my own experience in academe, I’d say the historians are portrayed spot-on, especially the fussy Professor Clun and the obese Rose Lorimer who is obsessed with Celtic Christianity. (Now the current rage, especially amongst Anglicans.) Wilson excels at creating monstrous characters, grotesque but fascinating, like Gerald’s estranged wife Inge, a formidable virago of passive aggressiveness, Yves the young Frenchman who learned English from GIs and talks like an American efficiency expert (can anyone now remember when American businesses were efficient?), and Derek Kershaw the Anglo-Catholic sociologist who gives factory workers lectures on returning to the Middle Ages. As for Elvira, she marries ‘an important young painter of the Lupus Street Group’, most appropriately as her real-life model Sonia carried the sobriquet ‘the Euston Road Venus’!
Some readers have complained that there is scarcely a plot, and I’d agree that the pagan artefact in the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon saint is largely a McGuffin to allow the display of an array of characters from distinguished professors to rent-boys and retired lavatory attendants with Dickensian names like Mrs Salad. From my own experience in academe, I’d say the historians are portrayed spot-on, especially the fussy Professor Clun and the obese Rose Lorimer who is obsessed with Celtic Christianity. (Now the current rage, especially amongst Anglicans.) Wilson excels at creating monstrous characters, grotesque but fascinating, like Gerald’s estranged wife Inge, a formidable virago of passive aggressiveness, Yves the young Frenchman who learned English from GIs and talks like an American efficiency expert (can anyone now remember when American businesses were efficient?), and Derek Kershaw the Anglo-Catholic sociologist who gives factory workers lectures on returning to the Middle Ages. As for Elvira, she marries ‘an important young painter of the Lupus Street Group’, most appropriately as her real-life model Sonia carried the sobriquet ‘the Euston Road Venus’!
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November 15, 2018A portrait of an aging academic and his wide if unloved circle of family and colleagues, with an engaging through line regarding the destructive effects of falsity. Three weeks in England was enough for my Anglophilia to rub thin, but reading this on the flight back to LA was nearly enough to make me buy a return ticket to Essex. Haha—I’m kidding, the sun never comes out and they’re all weird looking. Anyway, this was clever and enjoyable, I liked it more than I’d figured.
February 27, 2019
I dug this book to the earth's core and back. Wilson had baked a layer cake, with layer after layer after layer troweled on to create a magnificently dense, thick, darkly bitter tragicomedy. The plot is a hypnotic spiral, turning round and round. Or maybe a drill, turning round and round, boring right into the pleasure centers of your brain. The characters are all terrible, horrible, hateful people; maybe even occasionally melodramatically so - but so, so fascinating. Would I want to live in this world that Angus Wilson created? Absolutely not. But lurking here for a while was devilishly good fun.
December 10, 2019
I was surprised when I looked at a few review sites and saw that Anglo-Saxon Attitudes wasn’t particularly popular among recent readers.
The plot is at first glance flimsy. Gerald Middleton is a 60-year-old retired historian. He is independently wealthy and well liked by his academic peers, but there is a sense of unfulfilled potential. He lives a comfortable life but is dogged by thoughts of his great unfinished work on Cnut.
Gerald was one of a group of people who were in the village of Melpham forty years earlier when an Anglo-Saxon bishop was apparently discovered with a pagan ornament in his grave. This has caused a major re-evaluation of what was known of the period. However Gerald has reason to believe that the find was a hoax.
It seems that Gerald’s life has a kind of paralysis. He can’t commit to his academic work, because he feels a fraud, but nor does he have the courage to tell anyone about his suspicions. His marriage is long over, but he has not divorced and continues to maintain an ostensibly amicable relationship with his estranged wife, Ingeborg.
Gerald is drawn back into the academic world when he is asked to edit a new history book, not least because the other candidates are so unpopular. Meanwhile he becomes drawn into a number of complicated situations with Ingeborg and his adult children. However events come to a head when a prominent archaeologist discovers a grave with some similarities to Melpham and draws inferences based on both finds. Gerald has to decide whether to speak out.
While the Melpham storyline gives the novel its shape, it is a fairly small part of the novel with no major twists of surprises, which is perhaps why contemporary, more plot-driven readers are disappointed. The book has a profusion of characters, who are all connected somehow with Gerald or Melpham and they are each acting out their own sub-plot, while contributing to the overall arc. (We don’t think of our lives as sub-plots in someone else’s story, so why should they?) It is an elegant and entertaining structure, though the list of characters at the beginning did prove useful once or twice.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is such fun it’s easy to dismiss it as a light social comedy, but over time the themes creep up on you. Its characters are all, in their own esoteric ways, embroiled in matters of truth and faith. Gerald’s son, John, a former MP turned campaigning journalist, is championing the cause of a man who he thinks has been mistreated by the civil service, while his other son, Robin, who runs the family business, is more sympathetic with the civil servant and attempts to intervene on his behalf.
Then there is an incident in Gerald’s daughter, Kay’s, childhood which he has views about, which, as with Melpham, he has never articulated. There are the conflicting, but entrenched, beliefs of his academic colleagues, which reflect their temperaments as much as their learning.
The title of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is drawn from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The novel plays with what it means to be Anglo-Saxon both in the historical sense of the term and the contemporary popular use. This is a post-war society where the classes are more fluid, where social norms around class and sexuality are being eroded. John is openly gay – among his friends, at least – and socialises with the son of his father’s former cleaner.
There are characters of various nationalities (although they are overwhelmingly white and European) who both highlight and subvert national stereotypes. The most prominent is Ingeborg, the socially liberal Dane, who in her very acceptance of her husband’s affair manages to undermine it, and whose apparent reasonableness exerts a powerful control over her children.
Reading this book feels like being at a party where everyone is just a little more witty and colourful than in real life. I definitely want to read more of Wilson's work.
The plot is at first glance flimsy. Gerald Middleton is a 60-year-old retired historian. He is independently wealthy and well liked by his academic peers, but there is a sense of unfulfilled potential. He lives a comfortable life but is dogged by thoughts of his great unfinished work on Cnut.
Gerald was one of a group of people who were in the village of Melpham forty years earlier when an Anglo-Saxon bishop was apparently discovered with a pagan ornament in his grave. This has caused a major re-evaluation of what was known of the period. However Gerald has reason to believe that the find was a hoax.
It seems that Gerald’s life has a kind of paralysis. He can’t commit to his academic work, because he feels a fraud, but nor does he have the courage to tell anyone about his suspicions. His marriage is long over, but he has not divorced and continues to maintain an ostensibly amicable relationship with his estranged wife, Ingeborg.
Gerald is drawn back into the academic world when he is asked to edit a new history book, not least because the other candidates are so unpopular. Meanwhile he becomes drawn into a number of complicated situations with Ingeborg and his adult children. However events come to a head when a prominent archaeologist discovers a grave with some similarities to Melpham and draws inferences based on both finds. Gerald has to decide whether to speak out.
While the Melpham storyline gives the novel its shape, it is a fairly small part of the novel with no major twists of surprises, which is perhaps why contemporary, more plot-driven readers are disappointed. The book has a profusion of characters, who are all connected somehow with Gerald or Melpham and they are each acting out their own sub-plot, while contributing to the overall arc. (We don’t think of our lives as sub-plots in someone else’s story, so why should they?) It is an elegant and entertaining structure, though the list of characters at the beginning did prove useful once or twice.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is such fun it’s easy to dismiss it as a light social comedy, but over time the themes creep up on you. Its characters are all, in their own esoteric ways, embroiled in matters of truth and faith. Gerald’s son, John, a former MP turned campaigning journalist, is championing the cause of a man who he thinks has been mistreated by the civil service, while his other son, Robin, who runs the family business, is more sympathetic with the civil servant and attempts to intervene on his behalf.
Then there is an incident in Gerald’s daughter, Kay’s, childhood which he has views about, which, as with Melpham, he has never articulated. There are the conflicting, but entrenched, beliefs of his academic colleagues, which reflect their temperaments as much as their learning.
The title of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is drawn from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The novel plays with what it means to be Anglo-Saxon both in the historical sense of the term and the contemporary popular use. This is a post-war society where the classes are more fluid, where social norms around class and sexuality are being eroded. John is openly gay – among his friends, at least – and socialises with the son of his father’s former cleaner.
There are characters of various nationalities (although they are overwhelmingly white and European) who both highlight and subvert national stereotypes. The most prominent is Ingeborg, the socially liberal Dane, who in her very acceptance of her husband’s affair manages to undermine it, and whose apparent reasonableness exerts a powerful control over her children.
Reading this book feels like being at a party where everyone is just a little more witty and colourful than in real life. I definitely want to read more of Wilson's work.
January 17, 2011
This is the second of Angus Wilson's books I've read, allowing me to engage in generalizations. 1950s England, a father of adult children is having a late mid-life crisis - there is also a significant gay theme, of which Wilson was noted as an unusually frank explorer for the time. This book is also a good early example of the campus novel, following Lucky Jim by only two years.
April 13, 2015
I thought when I started that this book was going to be satire, and particularly vicious satire at that. And then at some point, without my really even realizing it, there was a core of humanity that sprang up and surprised me. It made the characters more symapthetic, except the most truly awful ones (Yves, Alice Cresset), and these latter it made horrible rather than funny.
All in all, the book was a pleasant surprise. I may try some of his others.
All in all, the book was a pleasant surprise. I may try some of his others.
September 15, 2022
I picked this up shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It seemed appropriate, having been published a few years after her coronation.
This is an excellent novel. Wilson's sense of humor never undercuts his characters' humanity. All the characters possess believable complexity that Wilson's narrator scrupulously reveals. The counterpoint between the history theme and the contemporary theme plays out beautifully. Highly recommended.
This is an excellent novel. Wilson's sense of humor never undercuts his characters' humanity. All the characters possess believable complexity that Wilson's narrator scrupulously reveals. The counterpoint between the history theme and the contemporary theme plays out beautifully. Highly recommended.
June 16, 2025
This is a fascinating novel, and is very unlike everything else I've ever read. First things first: the plot has an entertaining premise, but is overall pretty simplistic and weak. Similarly, the characters (with the significant exception of protagonist Gerald) are often one-dimensional stereotypes, with their respective particularly awful traits.
But that's not the point. These are just vehicles to carry through a cutting, many-layered, and very subtle satire. This is a very thematic novel, and really shouldn't be read at face value. Without giving too much away, I think it's a great satire of academia in particular (and honestly says a lot about how institutions progress, how knowledge selectively disseminates, and the relationship of individuals to truth: all more relevant than ever in the present day). Overall, a bit of an acquired taste, but it's a magnificent novel: and wildly funny if you read between the lines.
But that's not the point. These are just vehicles to carry through a cutting, many-layered, and very subtle satire. This is a very thematic novel, and really shouldn't be read at face value. Without giving too much away, I think it's a great satire of academia in particular (and honestly says a lot about how institutions progress, how knowledge selectively disseminates, and the relationship of individuals to truth: all more relevant than ever in the present day). Overall, a bit of an acquired taste, but it's a magnificent novel: and wildly funny if you read between the lines.
April 7, 2019
Not really my cup of tea. This overblown tale of an aging scholar coming to terms with some harsh realities (realizing that his children, ex-wives and many friends are rather insufferable) and a minor scandal (an archeological relic he discovered as a youth turns out to have been a hoax) comes across like soap opera among the intellectual set. It's notable that Wilson was an openly gay author in the 1950s, but most of the wit and cleverness here was difficult for me to perceive.
January 8, 2021
Alexandraungureanu777@yahoo.com
June 22, 2020
This is one of the most representative works of the author. It is concerned principally with double standards and self-deception and secondarily with homosexuality.
There are in point of fact two stories, one public, one private, which are united by the primary character, Gerald Middleton. The public story relates to a historical fraud resulting from a malevolent practical joke. In the course of archaeological excavations in 1912, the tomb of a 7th century Bishop is found. Out of hatred for his father Professor Stokesay, Gilbert the young Bohemian son, plants a phallic pagan idol in the Bishop's coffin.
This deception leads to the conclusion that the Bishop was an apostate - a disgrace on early English Church. Professor Stokesay and another antiquary, Canon Portway, both now dead, had come to know of the deception, but for fear of compromising the medieval historians had kept quiet.
Gerald Middleton, Professor Emeritus of early medieval history, had known the truth all along. It had been revealed to him at the time by Gilbert himself (Gilbert was killed in the war of 1914 - 18), but in spite of his troubled conscience had failed to speak up because of a weak will.
Here comes the story of his domestic life. He had ruined his life with his Scandinavian wife Ingeborg by his affair with Gilbert's widow Dollie; Instead of facing facts both husband and wife had kept up a false show of harmony and propriety. Their three children had grown up in the shadow of this odd make-believe and had in consequence developed their own whims.
Robin, the eldest son, married, and father of a fine boy, had a mistress. John, a promising public figure, was a homosexual: his infatuation for an Irish juvenile delinquent cost him a leg. Kay, the daughter with a burnt hand, made an unfortunate marriage and was embittered. They all hated their father, and when he made a last desperate attempt to conciliate them he succeeded only in alienating them altogther.
This climax of his ruined home-life made him comprehend the self-deception he has been practising. This truth about himself gave him audacity and fortitude and new hope. He went and told the truth about the historical fraud and what was more, he accepted the chairmanship of the Historical Association. He was ready for a fresh start.
The best drawn characters are the frank, unabashed whores Dollie and Elvira, and the delightful working class snob Mrs. Salad. One would have liked to see a little more of that insinuating rogue Yves who is ever willing to oblige great ladies and artists.
A wonderful read, fair and square.
There are in point of fact two stories, one public, one private, which are united by the primary character, Gerald Middleton. The public story relates to a historical fraud resulting from a malevolent practical joke. In the course of archaeological excavations in 1912, the tomb of a 7th century Bishop is found. Out of hatred for his father Professor Stokesay, Gilbert the young Bohemian son, plants a phallic pagan idol in the Bishop's coffin.
This deception leads to the conclusion that the Bishop was an apostate - a disgrace on early English Church. Professor Stokesay and another antiquary, Canon Portway, both now dead, had come to know of the deception, but for fear of compromising the medieval historians had kept quiet.
Gerald Middleton, Professor Emeritus of early medieval history, had known the truth all along. It had been revealed to him at the time by Gilbert himself (Gilbert was killed in the war of 1914 - 18), but in spite of his troubled conscience had failed to speak up because of a weak will.
Here comes the story of his domestic life. He had ruined his life with his Scandinavian wife Ingeborg by his affair with Gilbert's widow Dollie; Instead of facing facts both husband and wife had kept up a false show of harmony and propriety. Their three children had grown up in the shadow of this odd make-believe and had in consequence developed their own whims.
Robin, the eldest son, married, and father of a fine boy, had a mistress. John, a promising public figure, was a homosexual: his infatuation for an Irish juvenile delinquent cost him a leg. Kay, the daughter with a burnt hand, made an unfortunate marriage and was embittered. They all hated their father, and when he made a last desperate attempt to conciliate them he succeeded only in alienating them altogther.
This climax of his ruined home-life made him comprehend the self-deception he has been practising. This truth about himself gave him audacity and fortitude and new hope. He went and told the truth about the historical fraud and what was more, he accepted the chairmanship of the Historical Association. He was ready for a fresh start.
The best drawn characters are the frank, unabashed whores Dollie and Elvira, and the delightful working class snob Mrs. Salad. One would have liked to see a little more of that insinuating rogue Yves who is ever willing to oblige great ladies and artists.
A wonderful read, fair and square.
August 16, 2025
Anglo –Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson is a Magnum opus included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list…’One of the five greatest novels of the century’— Anthony Burgess
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
10 out of 10
One could see this chef d’oeuvre as a modern version (published in 1956) of War and Peace, with the benefit of being able to relate better to characters that live (if only metaphorically) in our age and not in the distant, difficult to comprehend czarist Russia, much fewer pages to go through, this being perhaps a quarter of the size of the Tolstoy saga (we can always check on the internet, but why bother, the statistics are not really relevant to that extent) but with the caveat that this is a figure of speech and intended as a sort of a practical joke, a hyperbole that we can associate with the scam perpetrated by Gilbert Stockway, when he takes a phallic pagan idol from one site and inserts it into another…
The ‘Melpham excavation’ had been considered one of the most important finds (they are also called digs, as we can learn from the recent movie with that title, with Ralph Fiennes in a leading role) until more will have been revealed about the hoax involved in the discovery, once the letters of the once esteemed professor Stockway will have been read (spoiler alert after fact…is that a thing, of course, this could be edited and included before, but then who reads or cares about this and furthermore, it does not seem as if all this masterpiece would be compromised by this small detail) and the whole debacle will be exposed.
We have a wind of what is about to be proved quite early, as the main character, Gerald Middleton, reminisces and recalls the day when his then best friend, Gilbert, boasts of his prank and the idea that when his father will be knighted and the son that loathes him will let the public know that the celebrity and admiration of the scholar have been based on a flagrant, Big Lie, but there is no way of proving that this was anything but the rambling of a rather peculiar, awkward and often vicious man, married to Dollie, the woman that Gilbert Middleton has always loved, but had been forced to separate from.
He is married to another strange character (again, the comparison with War and Peace was forced and strained for stylistic or just self-entertaining purpose – if nobody reads and laughs at these lines [with honest sense of humor, not in deprecation as in what stupid things this chap can pour out] nothing prevents this reader form enjoying his own blagues- but there are some parallels which can be made, the talent of the author, the number of majestic personages and their complexity, strange behavior…there are no people playing with a bear at a party, but one mother pushes her child of tender age and she falls into the fire, maiming her hand) the Scandinavian Inge, a woman of giant proportions, patronizing, false, arrogant, spending a fortune on ‘simple decorations and living’, keeping their children away (figuratively) from her husband, albeit the latter had been too involved in his affair to be a good parent and he only has esteem for his elder son, Robin, the one who is the head of the family business, and does not like either John, who is gay, a famous journalist and knight defending the ‘needy, nor Kay, the daughter that is married to another outré figure, Donald, the superfluous, vain academic.
The latter would be employed by Robin to give some lectures at the company, until he finds a suitable position in academia, seeing that Donald has had problems finding a job, what with his low Emotional Intelligence and poor people skills, but the brother in law is so superior and self-indulgent that he keeps coming to the office of the very busy CEO, interrupting, creating a nuisance and the image that this is unprofessional and when Robin rebukes him, he takes revenge by revealing in one of his lectures, a maneuver that had been shared in secret and which creates an outrage and serious consequences…
Like his father before, Robin is having an affair with Elvira Stockway, a rather neurotic (although is Woke, ultra liberals read this I would be canceled, if only I were to have an audience to be separated from) inflamed, passionate and brusque young woman, who likes Gilbert to the point that she may entertain an affair with him (this is what she would confess later, only as a proof of how far gone she was at that stage) and who makes a terrible scene at a pretentious party given by the French wife, Marie Helene, where pretentious people are invited – the quality of the guests is disputed by Elvira, who has her own milieu of superior intellectuals, artists, and it would be hard to separate the bias and the real from the false…
John aka Johnnie is the youngest son, a celebrity with a radio show, who has a penchant for campaigns that support the ‘common man’ and try to redress the wrongs committed by the bureaucracy, the irony in the particular story we are told is that the ‘victim’ had not been successful with the garden that he has to give up, and while the comps nation matter is indeed botched, the reporter exaggerates matters, to the disgust of his elder brother…Johnnie is also involved in a febrile affair with an Irish crook, Larrie, who had been involved with some very unsavory fellows, had broken the law…
Indeed, the gay lover would be invited to stay at the mansion, albeit in the premises connected with the stable or garage – I forgot which – by Inge, who is unaware of the sexual implications of what she thinks is platonic (Gerald is told about the orientation of his son and furthermore, he is warned that no good would come from the attachment to an individual who is clearly going to mean trouble) but the guest takes a path towards destruction, physical, first by wrecking the place, getting intoxicated and then stealing jewelry and when he is confronted with the theft, he becomes even more vile and aggressive.
As Inge is aghast at the rudeness, viciousness of the young man, she plans to call the police, when Larrie blackmails her, instructing his host that if that happens, the public will know about the nature of the intimacy between him and her son and at this point the Danish woman loses her grip and has a breakdown – when her son finds that his lover had taken off, stealing in the process his mother’s car, instead of showing empathy for her, he is enraged and accuses his parent for what happened and promising that he will not see her again, scared as he is of what will happen to Larrie and their threatened affair…they would run away to France and quarrel violently, the unstable thief threatens to kill them both and precipitates the car over the edge…
‘One of the five greatest novels of the century’ — Anthony Burgess
Posted 13th January 2022 by realini
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
10 out of 10
One could see this chef d’oeuvre as a modern version (published in 1956) of War and Peace, with the benefit of being able to relate better to characters that live (if only metaphorically) in our age and not in the distant, difficult to comprehend czarist Russia, much fewer pages to go through, this being perhaps a quarter of the size of the Tolstoy saga (we can always check on the internet, but why bother, the statistics are not really relevant to that extent) but with the caveat that this is a figure of speech and intended as a sort of a practical joke, a hyperbole that we can associate with the scam perpetrated by Gilbert Stockway, when he takes a phallic pagan idol from one site and inserts it into another…
The ‘Melpham excavation’ had been considered one of the most important finds (they are also called digs, as we can learn from the recent movie with that title, with Ralph Fiennes in a leading role) until more will have been revealed about the hoax involved in the discovery, once the letters of the once esteemed professor Stockway will have been read (spoiler alert after fact…is that a thing, of course, this could be edited and included before, but then who reads or cares about this and furthermore, it does not seem as if all this masterpiece would be compromised by this small detail) and the whole debacle will be exposed.
We have a wind of what is about to be proved quite early, as the main character, Gerald Middleton, reminisces and recalls the day when his then best friend, Gilbert, boasts of his prank and the idea that when his father will be knighted and the son that loathes him will let the public know that the celebrity and admiration of the scholar have been based on a flagrant, Big Lie, but there is no way of proving that this was anything but the rambling of a rather peculiar, awkward and often vicious man, married to Dollie, the woman that Gilbert Middleton has always loved, but had been forced to separate from.
He is married to another strange character (again, the comparison with War and Peace was forced and strained for stylistic or just self-entertaining purpose – if nobody reads and laughs at these lines [with honest sense of humor, not in deprecation as in what stupid things this chap can pour out] nothing prevents this reader form enjoying his own blagues- but there are some parallels which can be made, the talent of the author, the number of majestic personages and their complexity, strange behavior…there are no people playing with a bear at a party, but one mother pushes her child of tender age and she falls into the fire, maiming her hand) the Scandinavian Inge, a woman of giant proportions, patronizing, false, arrogant, spending a fortune on ‘simple decorations and living’, keeping their children away (figuratively) from her husband, albeit the latter had been too involved in his affair to be a good parent and he only has esteem for his elder son, Robin, the one who is the head of the family business, and does not like either John, who is gay, a famous journalist and knight defending the ‘needy, nor Kay, the daughter that is married to another outré figure, Donald, the superfluous, vain academic.
The latter would be employed by Robin to give some lectures at the company, until he finds a suitable position in academia, seeing that Donald has had problems finding a job, what with his low Emotional Intelligence and poor people skills, but the brother in law is so superior and self-indulgent that he keeps coming to the office of the very busy CEO, interrupting, creating a nuisance and the image that this is unprofessional and when Robin rebukes him, he takes revenge by revealing in one of his lectures, a maneuver that had been shared in secret and which creates an outrage and serious consequences…
Like his father before, Robin is having an affair with Elvira Stockway, a rather neurotic (although is Woke, ultra liberals read this I would be canceled, if only I were to have an audience to be separated from) inflamed, passionate and brusque young woman, who likes Gilbert to the point that she may entertain an affair with him (this is what she would confess later, only as a proof of how far gone she was at that stage) and who makes a terrible scene at a pretentious party given by the French wife, Marie Helene, where pretentious people are invited – the quality of the guests is disputed by Elvira, who has her own milieu of superior intellectuals, artists, and it would be hard to separate the bias and the real from the false…
John aka Johnnie is the youngest son, a celebrity with a radio show, who has a penchant for campaigns that support the ‘common man’ and try to redress the wrongs committed by the bureaucracy, the irony in the particular story we are told is that the ‘victim’ had not been successful with the garden that he has to give up, and while the comps nation matter is indeed botched, the reporter exaggerates matters, to the disgust of his elder brother…Johnnie is also involved in a febrile affair with an Irish crook, Larrie, who had been involved with some very unsavory fellows, had broken the law…
Indeed, the gay lover would be invited to stay at the mansion, albeit in the premises connected with the stable or garage – I forgot which – by Inge, who is unaware of the sexual implications of what she thinks is platonic (Gerald is told about the orientation of his son and furthermore, he is warned that no good would come from the attachment to an individual who is clearly going to mean trouble) but the guest takes a path towards destruction, physical, first by wrecking the place, getting intoxicated and then stealing jewelry and when he is confronted with the theft, he becomes even more vile and aggressive.
As Inge is aghast at the rudeness, viciousness of the young man, she plans to call the police, when Larrie blackmails her, instructing his host that if that happens, the public will know about the nature of the intimacy between him and her son and at this point the Danish woman loses her grip and has a breakdown – when her son finds that his lover had taken off, stealing in the process his mother’s car, instead of showing empathy for her, he is enraged and accuses his parent for what happened and promising that he will not see her again, scared as he is of what will happen to Larrie and their threatened affair…they would run away to France and quarrel violently, the unstable thief threatens to kill them both and precipitates the car over the edge…
‘One of the five greatest novels of the century’ — Anthony Burgess
Posted 13th January 2022 by realini
January 5, 2014
This was such an immense fun! It took me some time to warm up to the story, because there seemed to be a tad too many characters and I couldn't tell where it was going... But then! I don't remember when I started to like it, but it might have had something to do with the appearance of Vin and his set. I liked them a lot, the lowlifes! Especially Frank.
Inge was also fun to read about, but she was scary, even more than the horrible Alice or what was his name, Ives? Now that dude was evil! But fun. They were all evil and fun. I sort of rooted for Gerard, unusual for me - I usually end up disliking main characters.
So why 4 stars and not 5? Oh. I got some anti-foreigner and anti-working class (okay maybe not, but basically if you aren't at a certain level of income and education, you simply can't be worth much; you may possess a "reptilian intelligence". I liked it! Hah! Sounds cool, to have something reptilian) vibes. Also, I would have liked to see more about Larry and John's ill-fated (?) romance. It got resolved a bit too abruptly for such an elaborate build-up. I anticipated much more waves...
Inge was also fun to read about, but she was scary, even more than the horrible Alice or what was his name, Ives? Now that dude was evil! But fun. They were all evil and fun. I sort of rooted for Gerard, unusual for me - I usually end up disliking main characters.
So why 4 stars and not 5? Oh. I got some anti-foreigner and anti-working class (okay maybe not, but basically if you aren't at a certain level of income and education, you simply can't be worth much; you may possess a "reptilian intelligence". I liked it! Hah! Sounds cool, to have something reptilian) vibes. Also, I would have liked to see more about Larry and John's ill-fated (?) romance. It got resolved a bit too abruptly for such an elaborate build-up. I anticipated much more waves...
July 19, 2015
I struggled like a novice hanging wallpaper to understand the author’s reason for writing this novel, which strangely entirely failed to awaken and enthuse my interest.
I must have restarted it at least five times; every time thinking that if I could JUST maintain my concentration & get into the plot & sub-plots, then I’d be bound to enjoy it. I am instead forced to be honest, admit failure, and face up to the fact that I have no shortage of other books queued up, and which I’d prefer to read.
What continues to baffle me is that I still don’t understand WHY I failed to engage with this book. The weirdest aspect of making repeated attempts to read this book lay in my ever so slowly growing awareness of a slightly spooky ‘other-worldly’ feeling as my mind gently took over, “There, there,” and disconnected me from it.
I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced anything like that before. So where I wonder lies the root to my distaste? Plot? Characters? Setting? I’m perplexed!
December 10, 2009
A Dickensian list of characters and coincidences set in 1950s London. Hilarious caricatures contrast with all-too-fresh memories of wars and concentration camps giving a mysterious air to a generation that probably didn't see their circumstances as all that unusual.
September 7, 2009
The universe in this book is astounding. It is unfathomable that someone could write this.
January 5, 2010
Much better read if one is British or has a higher education in early English.
April 20, 2021
This particular reviewer rarely writes a negative review. If it didn’t communicate with me, there’s no need to assume that it will not communicate to you. A positive review has to concentrate on what was communicated, whereas a negative review must live in what was not felt, and that list is infinitely long, so where to start? “I liked it” or indeed “I didn’t like it” say nothing about the work in question, only about the reviewer, and this unknown person, often hiding behind an alias, should never be at the centre of the review.
So when it comes to Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson, why should I begin with “I didn’t like it”? Well at least it gets the opinion out of the way, because in the case of this particular book, it needs to be said. Anglo Saxon Attitudes felt like the longest book I have ever read. It wasn’t, but it did feel that way for most of its duration. But the reason for my opinion is complex and, I suggested earlier, has more to do with me than the work.
Details of the book’s plot are available elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the important element is the fraudulent planting of a pagan erotic sculpture into the grave of a Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon bishop that was excavated decades ago. The apparent authenticity of the find had to be catalogued, described, interpreted. For half a century this practical joke at least influenced thinking, at least amongst interested academics, on the cultural and religious origins of the race that now inhabits the country we now call England. Hence the book’s title, rooted both in the historical relics of the Anglo-Saxons, for whom “England” would have been an unknown label, and for the modern British for whom both the concept of “Anglo-Saxon” and “England” are both reconstructed myths.
Amid the need to keep alive the myth of national identity and culture, a certain person who was involved in the original discovery finds he hast to continue to perpetuate the lie. He has personal and professional reasons. He also might even believe it was true. To some extent he has built his career on the existence of the find and, equally, he built half of his life by shacking up with the girlfriend of the person who played the original practical joke on his father by planting the object in the tomb and then claiming its authenticity. Decades have come and gone. Lives have been lived. Relationships have been severed, remade and broken by death and estrangement. Gerald, who knows the truth about several things, has lived with the deception, but dismissed it as possibly false, gives given the character of the person who admitted carrying it out. Gerald now has decided it is time to come clean and tell the story.
But to whom should he tell it? And how? Reputations are at stake. Water under the bridge won’t flow back the other way. People have moved on. Or have they? Anglo Saxon Attitudes thus inhabits a society with what could be described as a rarefied atmosphere. These people are of a certain social class, attend gentlemen’s clubs, regularly drift into French, for some reason, when English is just not good enough. A single paragraph of the thoughts might refer explicitly but opaquely to five or six of the book’s characters, any of whom might have been encountered during the fifty-year span of these memories. For anyone living outside donnish society of the public school, Oxbridge or academe, these people are barely recognizable as English, as archaeological, perhaps, as something dug up from long, long ago. And yet they are the mouthpieces via which the concepts of contemporary identity and culture are lengthily examined.
A strand that figures vividly in every character’s mind, if not explicitly in the English culture being examined, is sex. The erotic nature of the apparently pagan idol in the Anglo-Saxon tomb places a large ellipsis after every mention of the word sex in the book. We have characters who are openly homosexual in a society that has laws against the practice. We encounter respectable men who put themselves around a bit, and women who express their desires via euphemism. And also some who do not. And there’s a lot more besides. Perhaps too much. Perhaps… For this reader…
Anglo Saxon Attitudes is a complex and ambitious novel. For this reviewer it falls short of all its implied goals because it concentrates too heavily on a narrow, unrepresentative section of the nation, was consistently patronizing to working class attitudes and featured characters who spent most of the time living myths. Perhaps that was the point… Perhaps… Why not read it and see what you think?
So when it comes to Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson, why should I begin with “I didn’t like it”? Well at least it gets the opinion out of the way, because in the case of this particular book, it needs to be said. Anglo Saxon Attitudes felt like the longest book I have ever read. It wasn’t, but it did feel that way for most of its duration. But the reason for my opinion is complex and, I suggested earlier, has more to do with me than the work.
Details of the book’s plot are available elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the important element is the fraudulent planting of a pagan erotic sculpture into the grave of a Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon bishop that was excavated decades ago. The apparent authenticity of the find had to be catalogued, described, interpreted. For half a century this practical joke at least influenced thinking, at least amongst interested academics, on the cultural and religious origins of the race that now inhabits the country we now call England. Hence the book’s title, rooted both in the historical relics of the Anglo-Saxons, for whom “England” would have been an unknown label, and for the modern British for whom both the concept of “Anglo-Saxon” and “England” are both reconstructed myths.
Amid the need to keep alive the myth of national identity and culture, a certain person who was involved in the original discovery finds he hast to continue to perpetuate the lie. He has personal and professional reasons. He also might even believe it was true. To some extent he has built his career on the existence of the find and, equally, he built half of his life by shacking up with the girlfriend of the person who played the original practical joke on his father by planting the object in the tomb and then claiming its authenticity. Decades have come and gone. Lives have been lived. Relationships have been severed, remade and broken by death and estrangement. Gerald, who knows the truth about several things, has lived with the deception, but dismissed it as possibly false, gives given the character of the person who admitted carrying it out. Gerald now has decided it is time to come clean and tell the story.
But to whom should he tell it? And how? Reputations are at stake. Water under the bridge won’t flow back the other way. People have moved on. Or have they? Anglo Saxon Attitudes thus inhabits a society with what could be described as a rarefied atmosphere. These people are of a certain social class, attend gentlemen’s clubs, regularly drift into French, for some reason, when English is just not good enough. A single paragraph of the thoughts might refer explicitly but opaquely to five or six of the book’s characters, any of whom might have been encountered during the fifty-year span of these memories. For anyone living outside donnish society of the public school, Oxbridge or academe, these people are barely recognizable as English, as archaeological, perhaps, as something dug up from long, long ago. And yet they are the mouthpieces via which the concepts of contemporary identity and culture are lengthily examined.
A strand that figures vividly in every character’s mind, if not explicitly in the English culture being examined, is sex. The erotic nature of the apparently pagan idol in the Anglo-Saxon tomb places a large ellipsis after every mention of the word sex in the book. We have characters who are openly homosexual in a society that has laws against the practice. We encounter respectable men who put themselves around a bit, and women who express their desires via euphemism. And also some who do not. And there’s a lot more besides. Perhaps too much. Perhaps… For this reader…
Anglo Saxon Attitudes is a complex and ambitious novel. For this reviewer it falls short of all its implied goals because it concentrates too heavily on a narrow, unrepresentative section of the nation, was consistently patronizing to working class attitudes and featured characters who spent most of the time living myths. Perhaps that was the point… Perhaps… Why not read it and see what you think?
June 9, 2019
Okay so. Let me start with background. I do a books and tea subscription box and each month I get four tea bags, a stationary item, a super cool bookmark and an old book. I subscribed to this box in, let's see, probably March of 2017. I read the first two books as they came and loved them. Then I got this one. It's now June of 2019. So you can say it's been a hard couple of years.
I have been reading this book for AGES. I think I started it when I originally got it but then ended up falling pretty far behind on reading these monthly. Because this book just wasn't great. It sounds good. The premise sounds wonderful, in fact. I was honestly excited to read it. But the premise isn't at all accurate. It makes it sound like it's going to be this super cool mystery about this ancient archaeological discovery that was possibly faked. But that isn't even a focal point in the novel??? That's some weird background thing that doesn't even turn out to be that interesting.
I honestly couldn't even tell you what this book is about. My best guess would be it's about the Middleton family and how they just Don't Get Along or like each other, no matter how hard they try (or literally don't try; looking at you Inge). But even that probably isn't right because there are about a million other characters who I couldn't even keep straight because half of them seem only vaguely relevant.
So. I didn't enjoy this book. And there were several times I thought about just not finishing it. But I'm stubborn and I want to read all the books I get from Bookishly, especially since the first two were so good. So I slogged through it and made it out the other side.
I will say, though, that it did get a bit easier to read once I got through the first hundred pages. I didn't really like anyone in this novel (which is another problem I had with it) but the least offender was Gerald and, thankfully, he seemed to be in it the most. So if it was a Gerald section, I could usually get through it without too much difficulty.
But this book also had wildly long chapters (they were seriously all, like, 70 pages each) and they'd flip back and forth between different characters and different settings and I honestly got lost so many times. This just wasn't a fun time.
But I'm done. Finally. I can't tell you how glad I was to shut this book for the last time. It was the best feeling. So now I van finally catch up on the two years work of books from this subbox that are currently tottering next to my nightstand. I know this one wasn't great but I still have faith in all the others. Some of them I am honestly so excited to get to. But this one? Well, I'm just glad it's finally over. It's been such a long time coming.
I have been reading this book for AGES. I think I started it when I originally got it but then ended up falling pretty far behind on reading these monthly. Because this book just wasn't great. It sounds good. The premise sounds wonderful, in fact. I was honestly excited to read it. But the premise isn't at all accurate. It makes it sound like it's going to be this super cool mystery about this ancient archaeological discovery that was possibly faked. But that isn't even a focal point in the novel??? That's some weird background thing that doesn't even turn out to be that interesting.
I honestly couldn't even tell you what this book is about. My best guess would be it's about the Middleton family and how they just Don't Get Along or like each other, no matter how hard they try (or literally don't try; looking at you Inge). But even that probably isn't right because there are about a million other characters who I couldn't even keep straight because half of them seem only vaguely relevant.
So. I didn't enjoy this book. And there were several times I thought about just not finishing it. But I'm stubborn and I want to read all the books I get from Bookishly, especially since the first two were so good. So I slogged through it and made it out the other side.
I will say, though, that it did get a bit easier to read once I got through the first hundred pages. I didn't really like anyone in this novel (which is another problem I had with it) but the least offender was Gerald and, thankfully, he seemed to be in it the most. So if it was a Gerald section, I could usually get through it without too much difficulty.
But this book also had wildly long chapters (they were seriously all, like, 70 pages each) and they'd flip back and forth between different characters and different settings and I honestly got lost so many times. This just wasn't a fun time.
But I'm done. Finally. I can't tell you how glad I was to shut this book for the last time. It was the best feeling. So now I van finally catch up on the two years work of books from this subbox that are currently tottering next to my nightstand. I know this one wasn't great but I still have faith in all the others. Some of them I am honestly so excited to get to. But this one? Well, I'm just glad it's finally over. It's been such a long time coming.
December 9, 2023
Review of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
By: Angus Wilson
Satire doesn’t always work for everyone and from other reviewers this novel didn’t work for them. For me it did with its criticism of English snobbery and a question of academic morality. Professor Gerald Middleton knows that the excavation of the Bishop Eorpwald’s body buried with the pagan relic is a hoax, a practical joke from a colleague. He lives with the guilt and wants to expose it, but there is no tangible proof and most want to sweep in under the rug. As people are determined to protect reputations. A lot of the book focuses on his relationship with his Ex-wife Inge and his children Johnnie, Robin, and Kay. His children don’t respect him, only tolerating Gerald, and his wife is so afraid of conflict she seems to easily forgive.
At least for me, there were only a couple likable characters in this work, and I couldn’t stand Gerald’s family, but I liked Gerald. All three of the children were selfish, horrible people, but it’s the parents who shape the children. Inge coddles them and Gerald isn’t an active parent. They don’t respect them, but Inge babies them referring to Kay as her little girl even when she’s an adult. She calls John “Johnnie” and is hurt that his friends take him away from her. Whenever things turn nasty, she closes her eyes and ears to it, literally. She hasn’t matured emotionally, and Gerald pities her. Inge’s Scandinavian heritage makes him look down on her and he sees her as un-English. Gerald’s English behavior makes it difficult for them to connect as a couple. When Gerald is pushed aside and hides behind his academics, because it is the only thing he can understand. Robin is little nicer to his father, but he doesn’t think highly of him. Robin and John have opposing views on politics, a common antagonism that occurs between family members that can destroy relationships. John is also gay something Gerald had no idea about and his current boyfriend, Larrie, is a thief and drunkard. He charms Inge, because he brings John back, but she refuses to see his criminal behavior. Larrie is able to bully her when she catches him stealing her jewelry. The plot of the hoax takes second place to the drama of his family but takes center stage in the last half of the story as Gerald decides to dive deep into proving this was a hoax.
By: Angus Wilson
Satire doesn’t always work for everyone and from other reviewers this novel didn’t work for them. For me it did with its criticism of English snobbery and a question of academic morality. Professor Gerald Middleton knows that the excavation of the Bishop Eorpwald’s body buried with the pagan relic is a hoax, a practical joke from a colleague. He lives with the guilt and wants to expose it, but there is no tangible proof and most want to sweep in under the rug. As people are determined to protect reputations. A lot of the book focuses on his relationship with his Ex-wife Inge and his children Johnnie, Robin, and Kay. His children don’t respect him, only tolerating Gerald, and his wife is so afraid of conflict she seems to easily forgive.
At least for me, there were only a couple likable characters in this work, and I couldn’t stand Gerald’s family, but I liked Gerald. All three of the children were selfish, horrible people, but it’s the parents who shape the children. Inge coddles them and Gerald isn’t an active parent. They don’t respect them, but Inge babies them referring to Kay as her little girl even when she’s an adult. She calls John “Johnnie” and is hurt that his friends take him away from her. Whenever things turn nasty, she closes her eyes and ears to it, literally. She hasn’t matured emotionally, and Gerald pities her. Inge’s Scandinavian heritage makes him look down on her and he sees her as un-English. Gerald’s English behavior makes it difficult for them to connect as a couple. When Gerald is pushed aside and hides behind his academics, because it is the only thing he can understand. Robin is little nicer to his father, but he doesn’t think highly of him. Robin and John have opposing views on politics, a common antagonism that occurs between family members that can destroy relationships. John is also gay something Gerald had no idea about and his current boyfriend, Larrie, is a thief and drunkard. He charms Inge, because he brings John back, but she refuses to see his criminal behavior. Larrie is able to bully her when she catches him stealing her jewelry. The plot of the hoax takes second place to the drama of his family but takes center stage in the last half of the story as Gerald decides to dive deep into proving this was a hoax.
April 15, 2025
【Scapegoat! / Anglo-Saxon Attitude / Angus Wilson (1956, Penguin 1958)】
See the scapegoat, happy beast, from every personal sin released. (P130, Chapter 4, Part 1)
I have to confess that I ceased reading this novel at page 214 for its exceeding unpleasantness. I liked the same author's short fictions a lot, but I'm really done with this "magnum opus." I'd recommend this book to those who say that they love depressing stuff: this is the most depressing horror novel I've ever read, disguised as "literary comedy."
It's understandable that this novel hardly gets any attention nowadays, judging from its sustaining energy in roasting the scapegoats like the protagonist Professor Gerald Middleton and other characters (from the late Professor Stokesay whose stature remains to younger ones like Kay Consett, the protagonist's daughter). It's not a strange energy, considering Angus Wilson started writing as a therapy for mental issues, but this level of distrust in people is just beyond most people's comprehension.
I know I have to separate artist from art, but in this case, it seems quite impossible, for this novel is an embodiment of extraordinary doubt about humanity in general. It's even a sadistic take on hypocrisy, just as defining a human being by their corruption. It's written in an almost perfectly crisp style, precisely effective to convey how he's standing against humanity, but it's overheated.
See the scapegoat, happy beast, from every personal sin released. (P130, Chapter 4, Part 1)
I have to confess that I ceased reading this novel at page 214 for its exceeding unpleasantness. I liked the same author's short fictions a lot, but I'm really done with this "magnum opus." I'd recommend this book to those who say that they love depressing stuff: this is the most depressing horror novel I've ever read, disguised as "literary comedy."
It's understandable that this novel hardly gets any attention nowadays, judging from its sustaining energy in roasting the scapegoats like the protagonist Professor Gerald Middleton and other characters (from the late Professor Stokesay whose stature remains to younger ones like Kay Consett, the protagonist's daughter). It's not a strange energy, considering Angus Wilson started writing as a therapy for mental issues, but this level of distrust in people is just beyond most people's comprehension.
I know I have to separate artist from art, but in this case, it seems quite impossible, for this novel is an embodiment of extraordinary doubt about humanity in general. It's even a sadistic take on hypocrisy, just as defining a human being by their corruption. It's written in an almost perfectly crisp style, precisely effective to convey how he's standing against humanity, but it's overheated.
January 28, 2019
lugesin seda raamatut, sest see on eluaeg mu ema riiulis olnud (eesti keeles välja antud 1970), aga pärast seda, kui ma varateismelisena kindlaks tegin, et mitte SELLES mõttes poosid, kaotasin ta vastu huvi, kuni nüüd hakkas hoopis see anglosaksi osa pealkirjast intrigeeriv tunduma.
no ta on väga anglosaksi küll ja ma ei kujuta hästi ette, palju seistmekümnendate nõukogude eesti lugeja sellest kõigest aru sai ja suhestuda suutis. aga mulle siin ja nüüd tundusid need vanaaegsed (tegevus toimub 1910ndatel ja 1950ndatel) inglased küll päris huvitavad. pool raamatut läkski justkui lihtsalt tegelaste ja nendevaheliste suhete kirjeldamise peale ära, siis pikapeale tekkis ka intriig (kas väljakaevamistel leitud puuslik oli võltsing või ei olnud?) ja lõpuks isegi lahenes kuidagi. kirjutati ikka aeglaseid raamatuid!
"Anglosaksi poosid" on fraas Lewis Carrolli "Alice peeglitagusel maal" raamatust ja Wikipedia andmetel viitab see spetsiifilisele joonistamisstiilile 10.-11- sajandi Inglismaalt.
no ta on väga anglosaksi küll ja ma ei kujuta hästi ette, palju seistmekümnendate nõukogude eesti lugeja sellest kõigest aru sai ja suhestuda suutis. aga mulle siin ja nüüd tundusid need vanaaegsed (tegevus toimub 1910ndatel ja 1950ndatel) inglased küll päris huvitavad. pool raamatut läkski justkui lihtsalt tegelaste ja nendevaheliste suhete kirjeldamise peale ära, siis pikapeale tekkis ka intriig (kas väljakaevamistel leitud puuslik oli võltsing või ei olnud?) ja lõpuks isegi lahenes kuidagi. kirjutati ikka aeglaseid raamatuid!
"Anglosaksi poosid" on fraas Lewis Carrolli "Alice peeglitagusel maal" raamatust ja Wikipedia andmetel viitab see spetsiifilisele joonistamisstiilile 10.-11- sajandi Inglismaalt.
April 27, 2020
"Gerald Middleton, eminent historian and scholar, is at war with his conscience. Separated from his sentimental Danish wife, mistrusted by his children, unable to satisfy his mistress Dollie, Gerald is torn between self-deception and the unhappy truth about his personal and professional life.
"But unknown to Gerald, all is not yet lost -- for the world is reaching out to reclaim him."
~~back cover
This was a difficult book for me: it seemed tedious and tendencious. A large cast of characters, and between them all they seem a nice representative slice of British society. But because it is set in the early years of the 1900s, many of the mannerisms and difficulties faced by the characters seem outdated and stilted.
I have to confess that I abandoned this book at 72% because I found the series on BritBox and binge watched it from beginning to end. The series seemed to follow the book pretty closely, so I don't think I've missed much out, do you?
"But unknown to Gerald, all is not yet lost -- for the world is reaching out to reclaim him."
~~back cover
This was a difficult book for me: it seemed tedious and tendencious. A large cast of characters, and between them all they seem a nice representative slice of British society. But because it is set in the early years of the 1900s, many of the mannerisms and difficulties faced by the characters seem outdated and stilted.
I have to confess that I abandoned this book at 72% because I found the series on BritBox and binge watched it from beginning to end. The series seemed to follow the book pretty closely, so I don't think I've missed much out, do you?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews