was raised, and where he subsequently lived. Willie Johnstone-Wilson was "a feckless father of Dickensian or Joycean dimensions", represented in his son's writings among "the shabby-genteel improvisers that populate the Wilsonian floating world". He had been a "stage door johnnie" who provided his family with "a curious hybrid of need and privilege" and "pecuniary embarrassments", the family being "downwardly mobile", Willie "piloting them unsteadily in that direction".

Wilson was educated