Novelist Lars Walker has posted a review of Sword of Honour on internet book site Brandywine Books . Walker has written several novels in what looks like it would be called the Norse warrior saga genre and so has an obvious interest in Waugh’s war trilogy. His most original comment relates to another war novel:
I was reminded of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, in the sense that this is a darkly comic book about the insanity of war. Only Waugh’s presuppositions are very different from Heller’s. His hero longs for a reason to fight – even to die – but is denied it. There were also similarities to Graham Greene, another Catholic writer. But Greene admired the Communists and hated Americans, while Waugh loathes the Communists, and find Americans merely vulgar.
Reader and Waugh fan Dave Lull who sent this along also noted with interest a comment to the post that mentioned as helpful in reading the novel the commentary of David Cliffe who formerly maintained a Waugh-related website. The commenter wondered whether that website was archived. Dave Lull provides this link to David Cliffe’s archived website along with some advice on how to get there:
A copy of David Cliffe‘s website is available via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160308112425/http://abbotshill.freeserve.co.uk/home2.htm
If you run into a dead-end link, i.e., nothing shows on the linked to “capture” page, just try a different date of “capture.”
Hat tip to Dave Lull once again.
