... a mea culpa, a self-appraisal so damning that it becomes almost endearing. Enough contrition, you want to tell him, you’re not so wicked a chap as you make out.

The cover of Confessions shows him in arch-fogey mode at 32, with his natty attire, midwife’s bicycle and meek demeanour — but this memoir, which takes us up to his mid-thirties, wants to demolish such an image. From the start Wilson presents himself as a shameless badass.

Mr. Wilson makes up in wit what he lacks in celebrity antics.

Wilson’s confessions aren’t quite to be understood in the Augustinian sense, though that hovers over the text. They are, though, confessions in another, more positive sense, a commitment to the act of writing and an acknowledgement of the role of memory in that act. Though there are Dickensian cadences throughout the book, it would be unfair to use the adjective of Wilson’s family portraits.

This autobiography has its high points, irrelevancies and irritations. Wilson’s exposure of the woefully Dickensian conditions of his prep school, described in another context as ‘a concentration camp run by sexual perverts’, is horrendous and timely.

Anglo-Catholic and sometimes arch, Wilson is also a delightfully close observer of the passing scene.