Andrew Wilson

Andrew Wilson was born in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, in 1967.  He studied English at King's College, London and Journalism at City University, London.  After leaving in 1989, winning the John Willis Memorial Prize for an investigation into male prostitution, he started work as a magazine journalist, before embarking on a freelance career as a features and investigative writer for publications including the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Independent on Sunday and the Guardian.  This is his first book.

Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson
Bloomsbury

Patricia Highsmith – author of Strangers On A Train and The Talented Mr Ripley – had more than her fair share of secrets.  During her life, she felt uncomfortable about discussing the source of her fiction and refused to answer questions about her private life.  Yet after her death in February 1995, Highsmith left behind a vast archive of personal documents – diaries, notebooks and letters – which detail the links between her life and her work.  Drawing on these, together with material gleaned from her closest friends and lovers, Wilson has written the first biography of an author described by Graham Greene as the ‘poet of apprehension’ and by Gore Vidal as ‘one of our greatest modernist writers’.