Before and After
By Alison Wilson
Constable, 192pp, £16.99/$25
From its cover photograph you might think this is an ordinary account of a wartime marriage. Its subtitle suggests something stranger: The Incredible Story of the Real-Life Mrs Wilson is indeed extraordinary, both in its human dimension and its supernatural one. And in an unusual twist, it was recently dramatised on BBC One with the actress Ruth Wilson playing Alison, her real-life grandmother.
Alison McKelvie was a well-bred young typist working for M16 in London in 1940 when she fell in love. She had an affair and then married a “likeable, kind, gentle, quiet, abstemious” colleague, Alexander Wilson (referred to throughout as A).
