Unhinged: A.N. Wilson compares Harry to Hitler

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. I would say "writer" rather than "historian"

He writes columns, and books, and has had a reputation both for writing on stuff he doesn't understand, as you say, and for off-the-cuff remarks that are libellous (eg he twice falsely accused David Attenborough of faking things in his wildlife documentaries).

His work before just being a writer was "lecturer in medieval literature" at Oxford for 7 years, according to Wikipedia, which gives this delightful anecdote:

In August 2006, Wilson's biography of Sir John Betjeman was published. It was then discovered that he had been the victim of a hoax perpetrated by Betjeman's disgruntled biographer Bevis Hillier. Wilson had included in the book a letter (to Anglo-Irish writer Honor Tracy), purportedly by Betjeman, detailing a previously unknown love affair. Wilson acknowledged the letter to be a fiction when it was pointed out that it contained an acrostic spelling out an insulting message to him: "AN Wilson is a shit".