Luther star Ruth Wilson to play her own grandmother who married bigamist spy with FOUR wives in new BBC drama
UNTIL her mid-teens, Ruth Wilson’s late grandfather was a total mystery to her – never talked about, not even by her gran.
The only glimpse the acclaimed British actress ever had of him was an old photo. Her dad Nigel said it was of his father, Alexander Wilson. Then the subject was closed.
It was around 20 years ago that 36-year-old Ruth, famous for The Affair and Luther, read her granny Alison’s memoir and discovered why Alex was never mentioned at home — his life had been a lie.
The war hero, spy and novelist was also a bigamist, a fantasist and a conman with FOUR wives and a total of seven children.
Alison, who was married to Alex for 22 years and bore him two sons, Gordon and Nigel, only learned part of the shocking truth after he had a fatal heart attack in 1963.
He had given Alison a number to call if he died. So she rang it. Hours later, a Gladys Wilson turned up at her home in Ealing, West London. She claimed to be Alex’s wife and the mother of his kids Adrian, Dennis and Daphne.
Granny knew grandad had one other wife, thank God she didn’t know about the other two
Ruth Wilson
Everything Alison thought she knew about her husband was called into question, even his date of birth. He turned out to be 69, not 66.
Now, 13 years after Alison’s death in 2005, her astonishing story is being dramatised in the upcoming BBC three-parter, Mrs Wilson.
It sees Surrey-born Ruth, who is behind the project, playing her own gran opposite Iain Glenn as Alex.
Ruth says: “It was quite an interesting process because my grandmother wrote her memoir with a perspective... she only knew about one wife.
“She had destroyed anything else that had any mention of my grandfather — any diaries or anything else. So she had this one thing that she was giving to the family, that was her narrative, her journey.”
Later the existence of two more wives — Dorothy and Elizabeth — and two more sons came to light.
Ruth says: “When she died, a year later, we had two correspondence from two people to my uncle saying they thought they had the same father.
“My granny in reality only knew about one wife and, thank God, she didn’t really know about those two.”
Whole life of deceit
- 1893: ALEXANDER Wilson is born in Dover to an Irish mother and an English father.
- 1916: Aged 23, he marries WIFE 1 Gladys while serving in the Royal Navy in World War One. They go on to have three children, Adrian, Dennis and Daphne.
- 1925: Leaves Gladys behind to work in Lahore, India, as an English professor and possibly a secret agent. Begins writing spy novels.
- 1930: Aged 37, he marries WIFE 2 Dorothy, a touring actress, in India.
- 1933: Returns to England. Leaves Dorothy and their son Michael in London, and lives with Gladys and their family in Southampton.
- 1935: Moves back to London on pretext of finding Gladys a home for them, but instead returns to Dorothy.
- 1940: Meets Alison McKelvie, a secretary at the MI6 offices in London where he works.
- 1941: Tells Dorothy and Michael he is off to war. They move to Yorkshire. Later that year Alex, 48, marries WIFE 3 Alison, 21. They have two sons, Gordon and Nigel.
- 1942: Michael is told his father died in Battle of El Alamein.
- 1955: While still living with Alison, Alex marries WIFE 4 Elizabeth Hill. She is a nurse, he a hospital porter. They have a son, Douglas. Elizabeth and Douglas later move to Scotland.
- 1963: April 4, aged 69, Alex dies of a heart attack. Alison finds out about Gladys.
- 2006: A year after Alison’s death, her sons are tracked down by Douglas and they discover their father had two more wives.
- 2007: All of the siblings and the grandchildren meet.
- 2010: Tim Crook’s book, Secret Lives Of A Secret Agent, published.
Playing her gran is Ruth’s toughest acting job to date. She says: “It is the closest thing to me I have ever done and it quite scares me.
“I thought, ‘Why am I doing this? It’s too close. It’s too raw. It’s too exposing. I’m worried I can’t properly do it.’
“I honestly think it was quite an out-of-body experience for me, and something that I haven’t really processed yet. There were moments when I thought, ‘I’m giving birth to my dad. This is so weird’.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ll need therapy after this’.”
As well as Alison’s memoir, the TV drama is based on historian Tim Crook’s 2010 biography of Alexander Wilson, The Secret Lives Of A Secret Agent.
Crook started the project when a friend Mike Shannon, born Michael Wilson, asked him to look into his father’s background.
Mike, whose mum was Dorothy, an actress, was Alex’s fourth child. His parents got married in 1930 in India, while Alex was lecturing, writing spy novels and possibly working as a secret agent. Mike remembers waving goodbye to his dad in 1941. Months later he was told his father had died in the World War Two Battle of El Alamein in Egypt.
Mike says: “Of course I was devastated, heartbroken, but also proud.
“So the last memory I have of my father is saying goodbye to me at the train station. He looked magnificent in full colonel’s uniform with belt and cap. I remember him saying I had to look after Mum.”
Yet Alex, then 47, was very much alive. He had just moved on.
He had married 20-year-old Alison — his secretary while he was a listening agent at MI6 in London.
Throughout their marriage he told her he was an undercover spook, while continuing his writing and doing average jobs that he said were a front for his spy work.
When he was dismissed from MI6 in 1942, he claimed it was a ruse so he could continue undercover.
In 1944 he was arrested for wearing a false uniform after Sunday Mass, and in 1948 he was jailed for embezzling takings from the cinema he managed. But he convinced her these were similar stunts to detract from his covert activities.
In her memoir, Alison wrote: “His explanation was that it was all part of a Secret Service plot to publicly discredit him so he would be able to carry out an intelligence job... Throughout this was his defence.
“I wanted to believe him. I could not face the consequences of not believing. I loved him because of the good I saw in him.” The family moved house 17 times in 17 years as they fell into poverty, when bills went unpaid and the rent was in arrears. Still Alison chose to believe in her husband.
Reflecting on her gran, Ruth says: “I wanted to protect her by playing her in all her complexity.
“That, for me, was protecting her — by showing all sides and showing that she was complicit in this denial as much as Alec was responsible for the betrayal.”
Alison’s poignant memoir reveals the anguish she felt at learning her husband was a bigamist.
She wrote: “There was no memory of him that I could retain and know that it was true. Every conversation we had had, important and unimportant, had been a lie... He was one vast lie.
“He had not only died, he had evaporated into nothing. There was no one left, because where there is no truth, there is no person.
“He had destroyed himself; there was nothing left but a heap of ashes; my love was reduced to a heap of ashes.”
In shock and grief, Alison had to bow to the wishes of Alex’s first wife Gladys for the funeral. He had married Gladys in 1916, while a naval officer, and still visited often.
A poignant scene in the drama Mrs Wilson shows both women and their children standing opposite each other as Alex’s coffin is lowered into the ground near Gladys’s home in Southampton.
Alison had told Gordon, then 23, and Nigel, 18, that Gladys was a cousin of their father’s. But Gordon, who wore his Navy uniform to the funeral, recalls: “Gladys, when she saw me in naval uniform, almost fainted because that reminded her of what he (Alexander) looked like when she first met him.”
Alison was spared the knowledge of Alex’s second wife Dorothy, and their son Michael, and fourth wife Elizabeth, and their son Douglas.
All of the surviving children and their children are now in touch with each other after Douglas tracked them down with the help of a genealogist. Ruth says: “There weren’t any divorces. He changed his middle names often so they didn’t have a record of a previous marriage. That’s how he got away with it.
“We don’t really know what he actually got up to or what he was doing with MI5 or MI6. We don’t know if the marriages... were they for work? Were they for love? We still don’t have clarity on that.
“I wish I could have him round for dinner and put him on the spot. I wish I could meet him. He must have been amazingly charming.
“I always believed he must be quite sensitive, I didn’t believe he could be a cad. I thought he’d be like someone that was unattainable in some ways and unknowable, and that’s what women were interested in — that he was a deep soul.
“And all the stories from the kids, they all had such love for him, and such fond memories of him, so he was obviously a really good dad and he had a wild imagination.”
Alex left a legacy of spy novels, nine of which, including The Devil’s Cocktail, have been republished. But a lot of questions surrounding the man himself are still unanswered.
latest in TV and showbiz
Ruth says: “He remains for all of us a construction of memories of him, there’s no real written piece from him. We’ve got his novels but we don’t have anything personal that he’s written that you go, ‘Oh, that’s the key to who he is’.
“He’s a man of mystery.”
- Mrs Wilson, BBC1, starts November 27