The most remarkable twist of Mrs. Wilson is that it is based on a true story, and one that is very personal to the lead of this show. Actress Ruth Wilson is the granddaughter of the real Alison Wilson, the very woman she portrays on screen. To celebrate the rebroadcasting of Mrs. Wilson, the WGBH Drama Club presents the true story behind one of our new favorite Masterpiece programs.
The Truth – According to Alison
While working as a secretary for MI6 in 1940, Alison McKelvie, then just 20 years old, was assigned to assist in the transcribing of tapped telephone conversations coming and in and out of the Egyptian Embassy in London. The man who was in charge of translating the phone calls was nearly 30 years her senior, an MI6 agent and popular spy-novelist named Alexander Wilson.
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In 1941, Alison took refuge in Alexander's apartment after her home was destroyed during the Blitz. The two began a relationship and married, eventually having two sons, Nigel and Gordon.
The Wilson’s lives, however, were far from peaceful. In 1942, Alexander was dismissed from MI6 after being suspected of staging a fake burglary at his apartment. In 1944, Alexander was accused of wearing a false uniform and impersonating an officer of the law. Although he explained to his family this was part of an intelligence operation, he served two months in prison. In 1948, Alexander was arrested again, this time for embezzling money from a movie theater he was running in Hampstead.
Throughout all of this, Alexander was spending large periods of time away from Alison and their two young sons. He told his wife that this was due to his work with MI6, but she suspected something else. Alison knew that her husband had been previously married, and she suspected that he might be having an affair. Deciding that she did not want to upset her sons with this information, however, she stayed married to Alexander.
On April 4, 1963, Alexander died suddenly at the age of 69 from a heart attack. In the aftermath of his death, Alison discovered a series of hidden letters. Unlike the proceedings we see in the mini-series, it was in these letters she discovered that Alexander never divorced his previous wife, a woman named Gladys Kellaway, and that they had three children together.
Alison never told her sons about their father’s other family. Instead, she wrote down her experiences in a memoir, and gifted it to her sons when they were older. This memoir would provide the basis for Mrs. Wilson, but revealed that the real Alison Wilson did not realize the scope of her husband's lies.
The Whole Truth
Alexander Wilson was actually married four times, and had seven children in total. Never divorced, Alexander got away with this by creating new middle names—each of his marriage certificates had a different middle name than the previous one.
His first (and only legal) marriage took place in 1916 to Kellaway while Alexander was serving in the British Army. Together they had two sons and a daughter, and took their lives on the road, running a touring repertory drama company and traveling throughout England.
In 1925, however, Alexander met another woman, Dorothy Wick, while on an ocean liner headed to British India. In the years of their courtship, Alexander’s writing career took off as he published first two novels, The Mystery of Tunnel 51 and The Devil’s Cocktail. By 1928, Alexander and Wick were married. Alexander used another fake name, and the couple soon had a son named Michael.
READ MORE: The Spies Who Loved Us: Five Spies who Mixed Work & Romance
By 1935, Alexander had cut ties with the Kellaway family after having a falling out with her aunt, who the family had been staying with at the time, and he soon moved to London to be with Wick and Michael.
During this period, Alexander began working with the British Intelligence Service, giving him an excuse to spend large periods of time apart from his families. By 1939 he was working with MI6 to help translate bugged phone conversations coming in and out of the Egyptian Embassy. It was while working on this project he met the young secretary named Alison McKelvie (Mrs. Wilson).
After watching her husband come in and out of Michael’s life for many years, Wick told her young son in 1942 that his father died while serving on a mission for MI6. Michael would believe this story for the majority of his life.
The next few years were tumultuous for Alexander as well, as he was fired, imprisoned and forced to declare bankruptcy in quick succession. He had published over 24 novels between 1927 and 1942, but as quickly as it began, his writing career had ended by the early 1940s. Throughout this time, he continued to lie about his involvement with MI6 in order to continue traveling in between his families.
By 1955, Alexander had married again, this time to a nurse named Elizabeth Hill. Together, they had a son named Douglas, who only knew his father for eight years before Alexander died from a heart attack while at home with Alison.
In the end, Alexander had four wives and seven children. But unlike the sequence of events in the series, it wasn't until 2005 that the full truth was exposed. That year, Michael—who had believed his father to be dead since 1942—contacted journalist and historian Tim Crook to help him gain context around memories with his father. It was through this historian's research that the entire scope of Alexander’s lies were discovered. In 2007, all the living children of Alexander Wilson finally met in person.
To learn more about the extraordinary lives of Alison and Alexander Wilson, make sure to catch Mrs. Wilson, being rebroadcast Saturday, September 7 on WGBH 2, or watch here on WGBH Passport.
