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'Angus Wilson is one of the most enjoyable novelists of the 20th century ... Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) analyses a wide range of British society in a complicated plot that offers all the pleasures of detective fiction combined with a steady and humane insight.' Margaret Drabble First published in 1956, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes draws upon perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history: the 'Piltdown Man', finally exposed in 1953. The novel's protagonist is Gerald Middleton, professor of early medieval history and taciturn creature of habit. Separated from his Swedish wife, Gerald is increasingly conscious of his failings. Moreover, some years ago he was involved in an excavation that led to the discovery of a grotesque idol in the tomb of Bishop Eorpwald. The sole survivor of the original excavation party, Gerald harbours a potentially ruinous secret ...… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member SomeGuyInVirginia
A comedy of manners concerned with what it means to be English, though summing it up in a line is as satisfying as saying Cabaret is a musical.
The action revolves around the early 20th century excavation of a 7th century English bishop and a pagan male fertility idol found in the grave. The
What happens in the novel is funny, mordant, sad, ghastly, and ultimately encouraging. I’ll leave it to you to get the details for yourself.
One item that really interested me about the book was the idea that the present is the culmination of the past but always seems so remote from it, and that the leaders of each age consider their own to be the most advanced and enlightened.
The action revolves around the early 20th century excavation of a 7th century English bishop and a pagan male fertility idol found in the grave. The
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protagonist, Professor Middleton, believes that its inclusion may be a hoax but for years has said nothing about it. The historical device nicely illustrates the different epochs that have gone before in the UK, and gives Wilson a pallet with which to draw several different types of Englishmen to be found in the 1950s. While each character is very different, Wilson deftly sketches out the precedents that have gone into creating their very English attitudes. What happens in the novel is funny, mordant, sad, ghastly, and ultimately encouraging. I’ll leave it to you to get the details for yourself.
One item that really interested me about the book was the idea that the present is the culmination of the past but always seems so remote from it, and that the leaders of each age consider their own to be the most advanced and enlightened.
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LibraryThing member DameMuriel
Dr. Borck recommended this book to me about a year before he died of kidney failure. The title is taken from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
There's a very convenient, and very lovely, little character list at the beginning of the book, so you know who's who. You know who each character
There's a very convenient, and very lovely, little character list at the beginning of the book, so you know who's who. You know who each character
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is. But they don't know that you know. But you know that they don't know that you know. It is empowering. And splendid. Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
I suspect this one will gain on a second reading--it's hard for me, a late twentieth century, transplanted Australian, to really get the class issues that Wilson is, I'm pretty sure, out to examine. It's funny in places, in a very English/ironic way, and the characters are fantastic. There's not
So obviously I am ambivalent. The introduction by Jane Smiley is much better than the usual NYRB introduction: she suggests that Wilson was trying to write a nineteenth century novel, which makes good sense of what he has done; and she points out, accurately, that many of the class references will fly over readers' heads.
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really any story, which I don't mind. And yet somehow it didn't grab me. Partly, I suspect, this is because of the ludicrously long chapters (this goes double for those particularly intellectual authors who refuse to put in any chapter breaks at all, or paragraph breaks, because, like, that would totally restrict the free-ranging wildebeest that is their genius); partly because so much of the book seems so irrelevant until very, very late; partly because I was expecting something else. So obviously I am ambivalent. The introduction by Jane Smiley is much better than the usual NYRB introduction: she suggests that Wilson was trying to write a nineteenth century novel, which makes good sense of what he has done; and she points out, accurately, that many of the class references will fly over readers' heads.
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LibraryThing member nessreader
Peer pressure and class consciousness and repression of various sorts combine in this 50s set novel about a suppressed archaeology scandal coming back to bite a historian's conscience. The long arm of coincidence is deployed to keep a small but diverse cast of characters crossing and re-crossing,
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but despite betrayals and disappointments it ends in a state of grace. I wish I had read this years ago. Show Less
LibraryThing member pnorman4345
The central character is an older English historian trying to come to terms with the decisions he has made in his life. Often he has avoided confronting problems and this has led to disasters. It is dense. It often deals with English social habits. The plot is filled with serendipity, rather oddly.
LibraryThing member dbsovereign
Wonderful complexity and richness of character. To sum up in a phrase: archeological excavation uncovers adultery. The dig serves as a background for all the whacky escapades and [I suppose] must provide some kind of metaphor. Mix the pagan phallic effigies in with that unreliable central character
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- it is an unpretentious yet thrilling Wilson (at his best). Show Less
LibraryThing member ivanfranko
An archaeological fraud has repercussions through three generations.
LibraryThing member Osbaldistone
Unfortunately, I think you'd have to be pretty well versed in mid-20th century English academic and political culture to catch all that Wilson put into this lampoon. It's not on the surface silly, but you know jokes are being set up. The writing is fine, but the subject gets tedious if you're no in
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on the jokes. Show Less
LibraryThing member ashleytylerjohn
An awfully good book, held back to 4 stars because I wasn't emotionally engaged (when compared to the somewhat similar John Irving, Charles Dickens, or Robertson Davies--it's that kind of book). A very large cast (dauntingly large at first, but eventually you work out that everyone knows everyone
Not as funny as I was expecting--really, not funny at all, or at least not in the way where I would tell others "it's so funny!" because it's not. It's a slightly satiric soap-opera. I was particularly surprised by the openness with which characters' homosexuality, adultery, etc., was dealt with (I suppose books from the time period aren't necessarily as chaste as the movies/tv from then!) so that's also a mark in its favour.
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else, and what those relationships are, and the book narrows its focus to a particular person/family and you realise who are the leads and who are the supports).Not as funny as I was expecting--really, not funny at all, or at least not in the way where I would tell others "it's so funny!" because it's not. It's a slightly satiric soap-opera. I was particularly surprised by the openness with which characters' homosexuality, adultery, etc., was dealt with (I suppose books from the time period aren't necessarily as chaste as the movies/tv from then!) so that's also a mark in its favour.
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LibraryThing member thorold
Wilson's second novel brings together a large, complicated cast of multiply-interconnected characters (so complicated that he apparently felt it necessary to include a dramatis personae before Chapter One), with at their centre the middle-aged, middlingly successful, medievalist, Professor Gerald
Forty years ago, on the eve of the Great War, Middleton's teacher, the late Professor Stokesay, had made a sensational find in the Suffolk tomb of an Anglo-Saxon bishop. Once seen as an isolated freak, new archaeological work on Heligoland (!) is now starting to persuade scholars that Stokesay's discovery might be part of a significant pattern. Middleton has reason to suspect that the pagan idol found in the bishop's tomb was planted there as a twisted practical joke by Stokesay's son, since killed in the war, but has never felt it appropriate to cause trouble by saying anything. Should he do so now?
At the same time, Middleton finds himself in possession of various confidences relating to his own family, with similar dilemmas attached to them...
A darkly-funny, morally-complex tale, with no real daylight at the end of it, but a lot of entertaining little jabs at the scholarly world and its eccentricities, and insights into 1950s English (bourgeois) society. Plenty of gay characters, but they are still mostly pushed into obscure corners of the plot and their lives are made to seem furtive and shady to the remaining characters: this isn't the brave new world of Mrs Eliot. Not quite yet, anyway.
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Middleton. Forty years ago, on the eve of the Great War, Middleton's teacher, the late Professor Stokesay, had made a sensational find in the Suffolk tomb of an Anglo-Saxon bishop. Once seen as an isolated freak, new archaeological work on Heligoland (!) is now starting to persuade scholars that Stokesay's discovery might be part of a significant pattern. Middleton has reason to suspect that the pagan idol found in the bishop's tomb was planted there as a twisted practical joke by Stokesay's son, since killed in the war, but has never felt it appropriate to cause trouble by saying anything. Should he do so now?
At the same time, Middleton finds himself in possession of various confidences relating to his own family, with similar dilemmas attached to them...
A darkly-funny, morally-complex tale, with no real daylight at the end of it, but a lot of entertaining little jabs at the scholarly world and its eccentricities, and insights into 1950s English (bourgeois) society. Plenty of gay characters, but they are still mostly pushed into obscure corners of the plot and their lives are made to seem furtive and shady to the remaining characters: this isn't the brave new world of Mrs Eliot. Not quite yet, anyway.
Show Less
LibraryThing member burritapal
Angus Wilson is brave. He also wrote this hilariously cynical book involving a wealthy family and its many branches and connections, all of them involved in lies.
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Original publication date
1956
Physical description
360 p.; 7.87 inches
ISBN
159017142X / 9781590171424
Local notes
HORN