–A new biography of Claud Cockburn, friend and cousin of Evelyn Waugh has been published. This is entitled Believe in Nothing Until It is Officially Denied and is reviewed on the British political website conservativehome.com. The book by Patrick Cockburn is reviewed by Andrew Gimson . Here is an excerpt:
…[Claud] Cockburn’s youngest son, Patrick, has now written an excellent account of him, supplying much new or buried information about his two marriages, his long relationship with Jean Ross, on whom Christopher Isherwood modelled Sally Bowles, the files kept on him by MI5 etc.
This account also reminds us of things we perhaps knew but had forgotten. Soon after Cockburn arrived at Oxford in the autumn of 1922, he was called on by his cousin Evelyn Waugh (they were great-grandsons of Lord Cockburn, celebrated Scottish judge). Waugh later wrote:
“I found a tall, spectacled young man with an air of Budapest rather than Berkhamsted [in Hertfordshire, where Cockburn was at school]. His father had been there for the last two years on diplomatic business and Claud was already captivated by the absurdities of Central Europe.”
Waugh’s letters and diaries confirm that for the next five years, he and Claud were constantly in each other’s company. We may think of Waugh as the highest of High Tories, but in his early novels he was an anarchist who set off a series of tremendous explosions under various ludicrous members of the Establishment…
A full copy of the review can be read at this link.
—The Times has posted an article by Ed Potton entitled “The 10 best Kristin Scott Thomas screen roles.” Heading the list is this one:
1. A Handful of Dust (1988)
After starting her career in bizarre style opposite Prince in Under the Cherry Moon, Scott Thomas delivered her breakthrough performance in this largely forgotten Evelyn Waugh adaptation. Her bored, restless Brenda Last won her the Evening Standard award for best newcomer.
Here’s a link to the entire list.
–The Wall Street Journal has published an article by Danny Heitman entitled “‘Scoop’: Evelyn Waugh’s Front-Page Parody”. Here’s the opening paragraph:
For those of us who practice it, journalism can be a comfortable perch for lambasting everyone else. But in 1938, British novelist and occasional newspaperman Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) turned the dagger deliciously inward with “Scoop,” a raucous lampoon of his fellow ink-stained wretches. Decades later, it remains a memorable insider takedown of the news business and its indulgence of rash certitude….
The remainder of the article is behind a paywall, but for those who have a subscription, here’s a link.
–We can now confirm that Oxford University Press has released in North America its edition of The Loved One in the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. The book is available for sale from OUP and booksellers such as Amazon.com within normal shipping and delivery parameters. Why there was confusion about the release date (at least on the part of Amazon.com) is unexplained.
