Brits in Hollywood

The long-awaited publication of Lisa Colletta’s British Novelists in Hollywood, 1935-1965: Travelers, Exiles, and Expats took place last month in both the US and the UK. Professor Colletta presented a preliminary version of portions of the book relating to Waugh at the Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference held at Hertford College, Oxford, in 2003.

Unlike other prominent novelists of his generation such as Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood (also subjects of the book), Waugh never intended to become an exile in Hollywood.  In fact, he made no secret of his disdain for the place in his satiric novel The Loved One (1948) as well as in his journalism (“Why is Hollywood a Term of Disparagement?” (1947).