–In a recent issue of Irish Times, Waugh came up in multiple stories. In a review of Elizabeth Day’s novel One of Us, the Times’ reviewer begins by noting that she
…deploys one of fiction’s most reliable formulas. It is the structure behind Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley and, more recently, Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn: a socially awkward aspirant outsider attaches himself to a privileged golden boy…
In in another item, author Kevin Smith was asked to name his favorite novels. The first three on his list were The Information by Martin Amis, Scoop by Evelyn Waugh and Don Quixote by Cervantes.
—The Times newspaper has a brief article about a well-known London establishment with a connection to Waugh, the Heywood Hill Bookstore. Here is an excerpt:
…Nicky Dunne’s mission is to make things a little easier for those who find themselves so inundated with choice that making one becomes nigh Âimpossible. Mr Dunne is the chairman of ÂHeywood Hill, a bookshop on Curzon Street in London that was a favourite of the late Queen. Opened in 1936, it was described by Evelyn Waugh as the “centre for all that was left of fashionable and intellectual London”. If this sounds a little Âintimidating, Mr Dunne doesn’t want it to be. He offers not only a subscription delivery service for readers around the world but a team of impossibly well-read staff who will choose your titles for you…
–The Daily Mail has a feature-length story about the source of one of Waugh’s best known characters:
…Carton de Wiart survived three major global wars, was wounded more times than he could remember, including being shot in the face, and shrugged off the loss of various body parts – a hand, an eye and part of an ear – as inconveniences. Rather than retire from the battlefield, he walked straight back in after each new wound had healed, proving a point to his commanders and fellow soldiers by learning to pull the pin from a hand grenade with his teeth and to reload a revolver with one hand.
Even when not under fire, he was irrepressible. He survived plane crashes, swam into enemy-occupied territory and, undeterred when he was captured in his 60s, tunnelled out of a prisoner- of-war camp. Such was his reputation for heroism that Evelyn Waugh is reported to have used Carton de Wiart as the model for his character Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, the eccentric fire-eating officer from his Sword Of Honour trilogy…
—Vanity Fair also has a feature length-story about a well-known historical personality with a less-direct Waugh association. Here is the opening paragraph:
Loelia Ponsonby, who passed away 32 years ago on November 1, married the 2nd Duke of Westminster in 1930. The partnership was, as James Lees-Milne wrote, “a definition of unadulterated hell.” What a testament to the extraordinary life of Loelia Ponsonby, later Lady Lindsay, that she refused to be defined by her hateful first marriage to one of the world’s wealthiest peers. A riotous Bright Young Thing who ruled the London social scene alongside Cecil Beaton and Evelyn Waugh, she was a virtuoso at needlepoint, a lauded hostess, and a talented journalist. Her memoir, Grace and Favour is considered one of the finest chronicles of aristocratic life that the country has to offer. Three decades after her death, here is everything you need to know about the marvelous Lady Lindsay, once the Duchess of Westminster…
