Reader Dave Lull has done some additional research in the archives of the Five Books interviews and came up with a July 2012 interview with Waugh biographer Selina Hastings. See previous post. She was asked about books relating to Waugh and the Bright Young People. Here is her list of the top five, but one should really read her interview in its entirety:
- Children of the Sun by Martin Green
- Fragment of Friendship by Dudley Carew: (This is a wonderful book. Carew’s portrait of Waugh is so marvellous because you not only see the brilliant young man but also the rather vulnerable school boy…)
- My Brother Evelyn and Other Profiles by Alec Waugh: (In a way I feel sorry for Alec Waugh. In his lifetime he always felt that he was the brother who succeeded. During the twenties and thirties, Alec was far better known than Evelyn. He wrote a book a year, and was very pleased with himself, adored by his parents…)
- The Picturesque Prison by Jeffrey Heath
- The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, ed. by Charlotte Mosley
These probably failed to make it into the Evelyn Waugh Archive because none has Evelyn Waugh listed as its author. Another book outside the “archive” found by Dave is Waugh’s Diaries which was included by Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash in his April 2011 list of five books about the History of the Present:
…It’s a document of its time. It’s full of hugely politically incorrect and, by the end, almost self-parodic episodes but it’s also brilliant at catching the moment that life is turned into art.
That one should have been in the Waugh Archive but may have been missed because it is listed as “ed. by Michael Davie.” Thanks again to Dave for his follow up research.
