How former spy Alexander Wilson cheated on four of his wives

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Skeletons tend to fall out of closets at rather unexpected moments. It is unlikely that the heartbroken Mrs. Wilson, mourning her recently deceased spouse, was ready to be not the only inconsolable widow of the writer and former intelligence officer. However, later it turns out that Alec Wilson had not two wives, but four, and no, they did not replace each other - each was part of one of the parallel developing stories of his life.

First wife and first books

It was possible to shed light on the biography of Alexander Wilson thanks to his son Michael Shannon, who from childhood was sure that his father died in 1942 at the Battle of El Alamein. This was not the case. Alec Wilson died of a heart attack in 1963 in the arms of his wife, Alison. Then the "cabinet with the skeleton" was opened. After the announcement of the funeral was published, Gladys Wilson appeared - also a wife, and not an ex-wife, as one might think, but quite real - this was confirmed by documents.

Oddly enough, then, in the sixties, the story did not receive publicity or continuation - both Mrs. Wilson agreed that they would hide the fact of Alec's bigamy for the sake of their children. Gladys had three of them - sons Adrian and Dennis and daughter Daphne, Alison had two, Gordon and Nigel. When in 2005 their half-brother Michael started his investigation, entrusting him to journalist Tim Crook, very curious information about the father of what turned out to be huge family became known.

Alexander, or Alec, Wilson, was born in 1893 in Dover, besides him, three more children were born in the family. His mother was Irish, his father, also Alexander, was an Englishman, a professional military man who devoted four decades to the army. Following the head of the family, the Wilsons constantly changed their place of residence - they managed to live in Mauritius, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ceylon. Alec was educated at a prestigious private school in Hong Kong, graduated from a Catholic college in Plymouth, played football. At the outbreak of World War I, he joined the ranks of the British armed forces, following the example of his father.

Wilson served in the Navy Air Force, but in 1916 his plane was shot down and Alec sustained multiple shrapnel wounds and a knee injury. The continuation of the service after recovery was out of the question - Wilson was denied his statement due to health conditions.

Meanwhile, Alec got married - Gladys Anne Kellaway became the chosen one. Wilson joined the merchant marine as a loader, but was soon arrested for six months over an incident while working on the liner. After the war, the couple settled in Oxfordshire, where Alec was the manager of a theater company.

Second, third and fourth wives and undercover work

In 1925, Wilson received a job offer in British India and, leaving his wife and children in England, went to Lahore (now Pakistani territory). On the way, Alec met actress Dorothy Wick (Michael Shannon's mother), and a romance began. After a while they got married - however, the investigation showed that the marriage certificate was not issued. Wilson continued to write letters to Gladys in England, worked as a teacher of English literature at the Islamic College of the University of Punjab, wrote his first novels, including about the hero of British intelligence Sir Leonard Wallace.

Then his books will be called "alive", "exciting", "bright" - but not by anyone, but by the most respected reviewers in England. The main feature of Alec Wilson's works was their amazing reliability - the accuracy in describing the details of the narrative suggested that the author knew firsthand what he was writing about. Therefore, it is quite possible that Wilson was more than just a teacher in Lahore. The situation in this part of the British colonies was quite tense, there were enough problems - from the risk of terrorist attacks to the activities of Soviet agents. Wilson's work in college, first as a teacher and then as a director, was supposedly just a cover for his real work - as an employee of the British Mi-6 - the Secret Intelligence Service.

In 1933, Dorothy returned to England and gave birth to a son there. Alec returned a little later, but not to his new wife, but to his old one - Gladys. He lived with her for a year and a half, and then, as a result of a conflict with his wife's relatives, he moved to Dorothy. Neither one nor the other knew about the parallel families of her husband. In 1939, Wilson already officially entered the service in the Mi-6, he was engaged in the translation of intercepted telephone conversations. There, at work, he met Alison McKelvey, and, without thinking twice, married again. This time, however, he told the newly-made Mrs. Wilson about Gladys, presenting her as the first wife and showing the divorce certificate, which turned out to be fake. Alec said goodbye to Dorothy in 1941, his son remembered his father in military uniform, who left them with his mother by train. In fact, Wilson stayed in London.

In intelligence, Wilson worked for three years and was fired - according to official figures, for distorting information in the texts of translations, they cast a shadow on some high-ranking officials. True, Alec told his wife Alison something else - that he was quitting his official service and starting to work as an undercover intelligence agent, so he had to declare himself bankrupt and serve in prison for petty theft as part of working out the “legend”. The family really managed to make ends meet with difficulty - Wilson's literary activity was constantly faced with obstacles, there was no work, the children - Gordon, and then Nigel - had to be raised with the help of his wife's relatives.

In the mid-fifties, Alec got a job as an orderly at a hospital, where he met the nurse Elizabeth Hill and married again. He told Elizabeth the same thing - that he was an undercover agent. After some time, the new wife with their young son Douglas left for relatives in Scotland, and Wilson still lived with Alison.

Does everything secret become clear?

In total, Alec Wilson had seven children from four wives - with the proviso that all marriages except the first are considered illegal. To obtain the necessary document, including for another marriage, Alec simply changed his middle name. At first glance, Wilson's biography seems just an example of the adventures of a swindler, but there are several significant nuances that make you think more seriously about the "legend" for wives. First of all, Alec was really devoted to his country, this was confirmed by the testimonies of people who knew him, and by repeated petitions to accept him into the ranks of the armed forces when the military situation in the country required it. Shannon himself recalled how his father met at the German embassy with Ribbentrop and other men with whom he spoke in German. Wilson's presence in prison could be dictated by the need to obtain information from the Nazis who were held in prison.

In any case, Tim Crook, like Wilson's relatives, could not get the documents that could shed light on Alec's real activities - the files remain classified. In 2007, members of Alec Wilson's four parallel families finally met - a total of twenty-eight people gathered. A little later, Tim Crook published the book "The Secret Lives of a Secret Agent: The Mysterious Life of Alec Wilson."

The Wilsons' discussion of the winding life path of the head of the family prompted them to make a film about all this, and in 2018 such a picture was born. In three episodes of Mrs. Wilson, the role of Alison was played by her granddaughter, actress Ruth Wilson, already known to the British through the TV series Jane Eyre. Ruth also served as the executive producer of this project.

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