Who was Alec Wilson, how did he die and is Mrs Wilson a true story?
Mrs Wilson stars Ruth Wilson playing her own grandmother, Alison
A NEW three-part drama based on a true story of betrayal, bigamy and espionage stars Ruth Wilson playing her own grandmother Alison Wilson.
Mrs Wilson is a new BBC drama that will air on Tuesday 27th November at 9pm on BBC1.
Who was Alec Wilson?
Despite some of the facts around Alexander Wilson being murky, thanks to MI6's classified files and Alec's own need to tell lies and keep secrets, we know Ruth Wilson's granddad was born in 1893 and died in 1963.
He was a novelist, a spy and an MI6 agent - he was also a serial bigamist with several wives.
Ruth Wilson said of her own papa at a press screening: "We haven't come to a conclusion. MI5 still won't release his records as to what he got up to there. They're 'case sensitive', whatever that means.
"But after 70 years they won't release them so 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 partly – were they for work? Were they for love? We still don’t have clarity on that. So he’s a man of mystery.”
How many wives did he have?
Over the course of his life, Wilson married four women and fathered seven children between them.
He never divorced any of his wives, instead keeping the women ignorant of each other’s existence as he juggled his many separate lives and parallel families.
Is Mrs Wilson a true story?
Thanks to the nature of Alexander’s life and career, it is particularly difficult to tell for sure what is fact and what is fiction.
Alec was able to invent stories about his continuing work as an MI6 agent, which apparently took him abroad as an undercover agent or forced him to take certain actions for operational reasons.
For example, when he was arrested after Sunday Mass for wearing a fake colonel’s uniform and medals, he claimed to Alison that this was a cover story enabling him to infiltrate subversive and fascist groups in prison as part of an intelligence mission.
Speaking from the audience at the preview screening, Nigel Wilson told his daughter: “I just about got through it, Ruth.”
He added: “What’s come out I think is absolutely fantastic. I’m your dad – but I think you’re pretty good.”
How did Alec Wilson die?
In the mid 1950s he met and married a young nurse called Elizabeth Hill – his fourth wife.
Together they had a son called Douglas, although Elizabeth and her son soon moved to Scotland.
On 4th April 1963, Alexander Wilson died of a heart attack at home in Ealing, where he lived with Alison.
It was only after his death that the secrets started to come out.