Sir Angus Wilson shot to fame in the late 1940's - his first stories were greeted by Sean O'Faolain and Evelyn Waugh alike with delight. He was championed at once as an odd realist providing new social maps of post-war England - V S Pritchett was to see him as revising the conventional picture of English Character, and recovering "broadness" without losing humanity. He has many faces as a writer. If he inherits the comic Dickensian novel of social...