An audio interview of Waugh’s biographer Philip Eade by National Review’s John J. Miller has been posted on the internet in Miller’s “Bookmonger” series. This may be found on the website Riccochet. It lasts about 10 minutes and begins with Miller asking Eade to comment on the fact that both he and William F Buckley, Jr, founder of the National Review, deem Waugh to be the greatest English novelist of the 20th Century. After throwing that softball, Miller asks Eade what Waugh novel he would recommend to new readers as the best place to start. In reply, Eade names two: Decline and Fall because it is Waugh’s most perfect comedy, written during the happy period of his courtship of Evelyn Gardner, and his alternative, A Handful of Dust, which he joins many others to deem Waugh’s masterpiece. If a choice must be made, he would opt for Handful. The discussion progresses through Miller’s own preference of Scoop, Waugh’s “conservatism”, and what is new in Eade’s biography.
