A. N. Wilson was educated at Rugby School and New College, Oxford. Destined originally for ordination in the Church of England, Wilson entered St Stephen's House, the High Church theological hall at Oxford, but left at the end of his first year. In the late 1980s he publicly stated that he was an atheist, and published a pamphlet Against Religion in the Chatto & Windus CounterBlasts series; however, religious and ecclesiological themes continue to inform his work. In April 2009 he published an article in the Daily Mail affirming his rediscovery of faith, attacking at the same time both academic and media atheists.

His particular slant on biography, and to some extent his take on the Victorian era topics he has covered in God's Funeral and The Victorians, can be traced to this religious ambivalence. His books on Leo Tolstoy (Whitbread Award for best biography of 1988), C. S. Lewis, Hilaire Belloc, and Jesus Christ are all simultaneously sympathetic to and critical of religious belief.

Wilson has a reputation, gained early in his career, of being a 'Young Fogey'. He holds controversial views and presents them to entertaining effect, for example in repeated appearances on BBC Radio 4 Any Questions.

Wilson has been occasionally criticised for his prose style. Nevertheless, his 2007 novel Winnie and Wolf was longlisted for the Man Booker prize. His non-fiction has been widely praised. Kathryn Hughes described his 2002 book The Victorians as "a magnificent achievement: plucky, engaged and full of awe at the way we continue to live out its inheritance today".. He lives in London.

In August 2006 Wilson's biography of Sir John Betjeman was published. It was then discovered that he had been the victim of a hoax and had included a letter (to Anglo-Irish writer, Honor Tracy) which purported to be by Betjeman detailing a previously unknown love affair, but which he acknowledged to be a fiction, when it was pointed out that it contained an acrostic spelling out an insulting message to him.The letter was sent to Wilson by "Eve de Harben", who then wrote to a journalist to reveal the hoax. The acrostic spelt out "AN Wilson is a shit" and "Eve de Harben" is an anagram of "Ever been had". Bevis Hillier, Wilson's arch rival and Betjeman's authorised biographer, was an immediate suspect but initially denied all knowledge. A week after the hoax was publicised, however, Hillier admitted responsibility, stating that "When a newspaper started billing Wilson's book as 'the big one', it was just too much."

Wilson later claimed that he has struck back with a hidden message of his own in a reprinting of the book. That has yet to be discovered.

• A N Wilson has completed biographies on Hilaire Belloc, Tolstoy, C S Lewis, John Milton, Sir Walter Scott and Jesus.

Non-fiction

• The Laird of Abbotsford: A view of Sir Walter Scott (1980)
• The Life of John Milton A Biography
• Hilaire Belloc: A Biography (1985)
• How Can We Know? (1985)
• Penfriends from Porlock
• Tolstoy: A Biography (1998)
• C. S. Lewis: A Biography (1990)
• Against Religion: Why we should live without it (1991)
• Jesus: A Life (1992)
• The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor published by Sinclair Stephenson (London) in (1993).
• Paul: The mind of the Apostle (1997)
• God's Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization (1999)
• The Victorians (2002)
• Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her (2003)
• London: A Short History (2004)
• After the Victorians (2005)
• Betjeman (2006)
• Our Times (2008)

Fiction

• The Sweets of Pimlico (1977)
• Unguarded Hours (1978)
• Kindly Light (1979)
• The Healing Art (1980)
• Who Was Oswald Fish? (1981)
• Wise Virgin (1982)
• Scandal (1983)
• Gentlemen in England (1983)
• Love Unknown (1986)
• Stray (1987)
• The Vicar of Sorrows (1993)
• Dream Children (1998)
• My Name Is Legion (2004)
• A Jealous Ghost (2005)
• Winnie and Wolf (2007) (Longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize)

A novel sequence referred to as The Lampitt Chronicles:

• Incline Our Hearts (1988)
• A Bottle in the Smoke (1990)
• Daughters of Albion (1991)
• Hearing Voices (1995)
• A Watch in the Night (1996)