The publication and phenomenal success of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1956 confirmed Angus Wilson's status as a world-class writer, on a par with other such literary greats as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, and John Osborne.
Still considered Wilson's finest work, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes chronicles the middle age of historian Gerald Middleton, a sixty-year-old self-defined failure, and of the most hopeless kind, ''a failure with a conscience.'' Separated from his wife and mistrusted by his own children, Middleton soon finds himself mired in one of the cruelest archeological hoaxes of the century.
Hosting a colorful cast of memorable characters from Middleton's gay son, who is dominated by his overbearing mother, to Dollie, his unsatisfied mistress and accessory to the great hoax, Wilson depicts the hilarious foibles of English society with an unexpected, bittersweet compassion. It is no wonder Angus Wilson was considered the Charles Dickens of his day.