A.N. Wilson- Favourite Things

Each week Reaction Weekend brings you Favourite Things – interviews with interesting people about the skills, hobbies, pleasures and past times that make them who they are.

A.N. Wilson is an essayist, journalist and author of satirical novels exploring British society. He is also known for his scholarly biographies of literary figures. His novel Winnie and Wolf (a fictional account of the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Winifred Wagner) was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. His latest biography The Mystery of Charles Dickens is out now.

These are a few of A.N. Wilson’s favourite things.

Being asleep

Being asleep is my favourite thing. Nobody has been able to explain to me how you know which is real life and which is dream life. I love my dream life even when it scares me. I am a real dreamer and it is often only at about ten or eleven in the morning that I realise what happened in the dream was not true. I had a dream the other day; I met the man that was my boss back when I was a schoolmaster, a very nice man, very scholarly. In the dream, he said I am staying at the Premier Inn at Euston road and I would love to see you. I thought, well you are the nicest man in the world but what would we say to each other after 50 years? For the first 3 hours of the day, I was thinking it’s rather mean of me not to go and how to get out of it…Then, I suddenly remembered he’s dead. Hooray! It’s awful and I am not really glad that he is dead, but that is the sort of nonsense one dreams.

My most poignant dream is that my father, of whom I was extremely fond, is spending time with me. We are often in London looking around an art gallery and having lunch. And then, towards the end of the dream, I think how am I going to break it to him that he is really dead? I have to say to him, after lunch, I am afraid you have to go back to being dead. I often have versions of that, and I do feel very sad after, but it is nice to have a dream afternoon with him.

Wagner’s Ring Cycle

My wife and I went to it about twenty years ago- we were real latecomers. We came out of the Royal Opera house slightly mad actually and we immediately went to Germany to hear the whole thing again. Then I wrote a novel, Winnie and Wolf, inspired by it. It is an extraordinary mythological take on the whole world, done through music. He called them music dramas- other people call them operas. The more you listen to it the more you realise how much Wagner understood about the crisis of the 19th century, which interests me very much, and about what is going on now. He is writing on more or less everything from extinction rebellion, the debate about religion in the world, the lust for power and centrality of love to human life and the fact that nature is stronger than the human race. All those things make Wagner’s Ring Cycle one of the greatest works ever written.

Bird watching

Although I don’t regard myself as a bird watcher, we were lucky enough to spend the first few months of lockdown in Cornwall. My wife has a retreat near Lands’ End, it is much too small for four people but there were four of us in it. In Cornwall, you could go for long walks and the police didn’t come and arrest you and I was just so aware, like I have never been before, of birdlife. There was everything from wonderful little birds to birds of prey. In the eaves of the little retreat house, there were swifts. Listening to the bird song, seeing their lives, it has been a transformative, revealing experience.

Cooking

I do not want to give the impression that I am any good at cooking, my wife and daughter would probably tell you I am not a very good cook. But I love food and I love shopping for food. We have had the same butcher for 20 years and I would not buy meat from anyone else. When everyone is away, I still cook for myself – I never buy takeaways. It is such a satisfying thing to do.

Drinking wine with friends

Wine or booze generally. I also very much like gin but house red is my favourite drink. Friends produce fantastic wines that are completely wasted on me. A carafe of house red is just as good. Being deprived of this is one of the things that has made the last few months utter misery for many.