In 1964 he began post-graduate studies in English at King's College London, specializing in "British left-wing literature of the twenties and thirties" with a focus on the work of George Orwell.

At the time of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia which ended the Prague Spring of 1968, he was out of the country on vacation, but returned on 26 August, the day the Moscow Protocol was signed.

[2] He got to know members of the Prague underground, including the art critic and poet Ivan Martin Jirous, who was the artistic director of the Plastic People of the Universe.

[3] Jirous asked Wilson to teach the band the lyrics of the American songs they covered and translate their original Czech material into English.

[6] After leaving Czechoslovakia Wilson went first to London, where he collaborated with the Czech exile Ivan Hartl to release Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned, an album by the Plastic People of the Universe.

[6] Wilson was an editor of The Idler, a "Toronto-based bimonthly journal of provocative ideas, politically incorrect opinion and literary style" from 1989 to 1992.