Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson was born on 11 August 1913 in Sussex, the sixth son of William Johnstone Wilson and Maude Caney Wilson, of Durban, South Africa. His father, a raffish sporting man who never forgot his social position, belonged to the Scottish gentry and had a private income. This became inadequate, so the family lived in genteel poverty in a succession of private hotels, a style of life that provided backgrounds for much of Wilson's work. He spent several years in South Africa, though only one short story, "Union Reunion," deals with this period. He returned to England and attended, first, a private preparatory school where his brother was headmaster, and then Westminster, a distinguished public school. He studied history at Merton College, Oxford, where he also enjoyed reading English and European literature.

A lonely child, he had escaped from the family philistinism by reading fantasy and doing mimicry...