–A recent issue of the Daily Telegraph reports the death of Roger Cooper. This includes a discussion of Cooper’s extended imprisonment in Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran:
Roger Cooper, who has died aged 90, was a British journalist and businessman who was arrested as a spy on a visit to Iran in December 1985 and spent more than five years in prison, under sentence of death.
For most of that time he was incarcerated in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran, often in solitary confinement. Nevertheless, he did not court sympathy when he was finally released: “I can say that anyone who, like me, was educated in an English public school and served in the ranks of the British Army is quite at home in a Third World prison.” […]
In February 1987 he was transferred to the notorious political prison in Evin, 10 miles from Tehran. “Shouting and cries of pain are often heard,” Cooper recalled, “only partly drowned out by religious chants and prayer ceremonies played endlessly on a tape recorder in the corridor.”
He was ordered to provide his captors with a detailed run-down on key figures in British intelligence. Having no knowledge of the subject, he invented a cast of personnel based on characters in the works of Evelyn Waugh, including a Secret Service legend called Colonel Dick Hooker, inspired by Waugh’s Brigadier RitchieHook. He amused himself in his cell by composing a poem: “Brigadier RitchieHook/ Is a character in a book./ My Colonel Dick Hooker/ Should have won me the Booker.”…
–The Wall Street Journal has an article by Witold Rybczynski who frequently writes on architectural themes. This is entitled “Five Best: Fictional Homes That Steal the Show”. The first on his list is Brideshead Revisited:
Evelyn Waugh wrote “Brideshead Revisited” during World War II while recuperating from an an injury…”It was impossible to foresee, in the spring of 1944, the present cult of the English country house,” Waugh reflected later, noting that “it seemed then that the ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic achievement were doomed to decay and spoiliation.”… Waugh’s admiration is palpable, as is his sense for a disappearing age.
The other “Fictional Homes” books chosen were Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell, Echo House (1997) by Ward Just, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) by V.S. Naipaul, and Master and Commander (1969) by Patrick O’Brian.
–Raptis Rare Books has on offer a letter from Evelyn Waugh to an unidentified addressee. It is dated “Oct 16th” (?) but no year or addressee is identified. Here is the text:
“Oct. 15th [sic] Dear Sir, My thanks for your letter of yesterday. I notice that the promise given to any writer’s books in your exhibition depends on his publisher’s arrangements of their stall, [unreadable] of whether he makes a speech or not; also that the special publicity devoted to the speakers has to be divided among thirty four. It seems to me that in the circumstances only someone fanatically devoted to public speaking could reasonably be expected to accept. I dislike it very much and only attempt it for charity or clear personal gain. I hope the exhibition is a great success & that your thirty four orators have their audience spell bound – but please excuse me from competing with them. Yours thankfully, Evelyn Waugh.” In fine condition.
Anyone able to offer additional insights as to the year or subject matter is invited to comment. A copy of the original text is available at this link.
–The website Art.com has posted an offering of a color reproduction of a photograph of Waugh dated 1963 and taken in the library at Combe Florey. It is not accompanied by any background information, but I can recall other photos of Waugh wearing that suit in that setting, if not perhaps that particular pose.
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Dear Jeffrey,
You and other EWS Newsletter readers may be interested in this rather extraordinary item of Waviana coming up for sale at Dominic Winter Auctions later this month (hope this link works): https://www.dominicwinter.co.uk/Auction/Search/?st=807&sto=0&au=870&sf=%5B%5D&w=False&pn=1
Two questions and an observation:
By describing himself as ‘A jonquil, not a Grecian lad’, is Waugh effectively saying his homosexual days are over?
The cataloguer first describes the embroidery as ‘probably made by Alistair Graham, who enjoyed needlepoint’ and then, apparently gaining in confidence, ‘almost certainly executed by Graham’. But does an auctioneer’s ‘almost’ certainty carry any legal weight and/or significance? Is this tantamount to a warranty?
One slightly nerdy observation: EW’s early handwriting and indeed signature seem quite different from his later hand. As the sharp-eyed Duncan McLaren has spotted, around the time of the Hevelyn/Shevelyn bust-up, just a few months after this inscription was written, the E of Evelyn went from being loopy to square (why?) and here is a beautiful example of loopy Evelyn. Early Waugh seems to render his lower case r as an upper case R (FoR AlistaiR’, ‘ChRistmas’, etc.); later he gets his Rs in order and goes along with convention.
Dear Hartley, I have posted your comment. Because these are so difficult to find in the Word Press format I have simply copied your comment as well as the relevant printed text from the auction catalogue. I will mention it again in the next posting.