Evelyn Waugh to Feature in Great Lives Series

BBC Radio 4 has announced a new episode in its “Great Lives” series that will feature a panel discussion of Evelyn Waugh. Here is the announcement:

Comedian Russell Kane nominates the novelist Evelyn Waugh, with help from literary critic Ann Pasternak Slater. Chaired by Matthew Parris. One of the greatest prose stylists of 20th century literature, not to mention one of the funniest, novelist Evelyn Waugh also has a reputation for being a snob, a bully, and a dyed in the wool reactionary. How much of this was a self-parodying pose, and how much the underlying truth? Russell and Ann are unabashed Waugh fans – Russell calls him “a ninja master of banter” – but Matthew Parris says he can’t stand him.

Ann Pasternak Slater is a member of the Evelyn Waugh Society, author of Evelyn Waugh (Writers and their Work) and editor of the Short Fiction volumes of the forthcoming Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (volumes 5 and 6). Russell Kane is also well known to Waugh fans having won a Children-in-Need Mastermind Special with Waugh as his subject and presented a recent Radio 4 programme featuring Waugh in the Evil Genius series. See previous post. The Great Lives episode will be broadcast on Tuesday, 11 December 2018 at 16:30 London time and will be available on BBC iPlayer to hear on the internet thereafter.  Other broadcasts  in the current Great Lives series will include Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) and Gertrude Stein. Here’s a link to the season schedule.