End-of-June Roundup

—The Times newspaper has a story by Magnus Linklater about the recent gift of a substantial book collection to the charity Christian Aid in Edinburgh. Here are some excerpts:

…Among the books collected over a lifetime by Halla Beloff, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and her husband John, were first editions of novels by DH Lawrence, WH Auden, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow and Muriel Spark, and also works by the German satirist Bertolt Brecht and the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Many of the books are inscribed by the authors personally to Beloff, who died this year at the age of 95 …

“Halla and John were both sophisticated urbane Europeans who moved between the US and the UK, so there will be great interest in America,” [according to Dr. Ried Zulager who has extensive experience with Christian Aid sales]. “They bought very carefully, and everything they collected was worth having. Some may be worth only £50, but others could go into the multiple thousands.” He pointed to books by Virginia Woolf, some of which had a limited print run, and the early novels of Kingsley Amis as examples of first editions which command high prices. One current catalogue has Woolf’s novel A Room of One’s Own at £7,500, and Amis’s Lucky Jim at £5,400. “Since there are more than a hundred boxes, and each one has between 30 to 40 books, there are a lot to go through,” he added.

Determining the overall value of the collection will require many hours of research and the market in first editions fluctuates widely. John Atkinson Books, the rare books specialist, is advertising a first edition of Waugh’s Officers and Gentlemen, [another copy of] which is included in the Beloff collection, at £115; however, a signed first edition of Decline and Fall — which is not — is on offer at £30,000. One of the US first editions in the Beloff collection is Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night. Estimates vary from £25 to £1,500…

–Alexander Larman writing in The Spectator reviews the new TV series about the Mitfords in an article entitled “Why television cannot depict the posh”. Here are excerpts from the opening paragraphs:

In her 1954 essay ‘The English Aristocracy’, the author Nancy Mitford popularised the descriptions ‘U’, i.e. upper-class or aristocratic, and ‘non-U’, to denote household terms. Although she did not coin the phrase (that credit belongs to the otherwise forgotten linguist Alan S.C. Ross), she brought it to wider public attention. When her friends John Betjeman and Evelyn Waugh added their own contributions, the result was the 1956 book Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy.

Language termed ‘U’ included ‘loo’ rather than ‘toilet’, ‘vegetables’ rather than ‘greens’, and saying ‘what?’ rather than the apparently more polite ‘pardon?’ Although a few examples have now dated – I can’t imagine anyone unaffected saying ‘looking-glass’ instead of mirror – it’s undeniably true that Mitford’s once-U, and therefore exclusive, language has proved more enduring than the non-U equivalent. Sofas are ubiquitous in the homes of England’s middle classes, rather than settees or couches, and most would refer to a ‘dinner jacket’ rather than a ‘dress suit’.

If the average middle-class Englishman speaks in a more elevated – and indeed pleasant – style of language than we might otherwise have done, they owe a significant debt to Nancy Mitford, who is also responsible for two of the funniest 20th-century British novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. This makes the new drama about Nancy and her family – the unimaginatively titled Outrageous – a disappointment, swapping the Mitfords’s love of language and wit for something decidedly prosaic…

The greatest flaw in Outrageous is common in contemporary British television drama: it doesn’t know what to do with the posh other than caricature them. Even on its own terms, the programme contradicts itself. It begins with a lavish, champagne-fuelled lunch at the Mitfords’s bucolic country estate, complete with heavenly-looking swimming pool – Instagram-worthy heaven, decades before even the (decidedly non-U) concept of an influencer poisoned society. Then, a couple of scenes later, James Purefoy’s splenetic patriarch David is telling his outraged children that, because of a decline in his investments, they will all have their allowances cut by half. It therefore becomes incumbent upon them – including Bessie Carter’s novel-writing Nancy – to marry advantageously and further their fortunes accordingly…

–Author and Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan is interviewed about his career in the Guardian. Here is an excerpt:

The book I could never read again
On being asked to talk in Italy on my favourite comic novel I reread Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. It had corked badly. My fundamental disappointment was with myself, as if I had just lost an arm or a leg, and if I simply looked around it would turn back up. It didn’t.

–The New York Times has published a profile of Usha Vance, the wife of the Vice President. Here is an excerpt:

…Ms. Vance has just made her way through “Sword of Honor,” the trilogy of novels by Evelyn Waugh based on his experiences as an army officer in World War II, according to her account on the Goodreads website. She is currently reading “Trust” by Hernan Diaz, an intricate novel about a secretive New York financier and his wife. During the 2024 presidential campaign, she was frequently spotted with the scholar Emily Wilson’s celebrated 848-page translation of the “Iliad.”

The reading challenge, she has said …, is a “bite-sized component of a larger project to continue expanding access to literacy.” The goal “is to roll out little things bit by bit and see which ones work and which ones don’t and then try to expand the ones that work. As a former lawyer, I get really bored if I don’t have projects.”…

This is consistent with Ms. Vance’s report on the Goodreads website, but unfortunately she has not included her opinion of the book or its characters. She presumably liked it or she would not have read the entire volume.

–Lovestruck Books in Cambridge, Mass. has announced a program at its premises that may be of interest. This will be on the evening of July 16 at the bookshop at 44 Brattle Street. It will include a discussion with writer Lois Cahall, author of the recently published book The Many Lives and Loves of Hazel Lavery, mentioned here in a previous post. Here is some more information:

Join author Lois Cahall at Lovestruck Books on Wednesday, July 16 for a night of scandal, secrets, and captivating history celebrating The Many Lives & Loves of Hazel Lavery ! A story that uncovers the  jaw-dropping life of Lady Hazel Lavery, the Boston-born, Chicago-raised Irish society queen whose real-life story is juicier than Bridgerton and bolder than The Gilded Age. Think royal portraits, revolutionary lovers, and DRAMA—Hazel’s love triangle with Sir John Lavery and Irish rebel Michael Collins is the stuff of legend (except in this case, it’s all true)….

In the heart of tumultuous times, amidst the grandeur of Victorian opulence, there existed an American socialite whose influence altered the course of the Anglo-Irish treaty: Lady Hazel Lavery

Boston-born Hazel ascended from her Irish roots to become the quintessential Society Queen of Chicago, and later London, where she lived a delicate dance between two worlds: one with her esteemed husband, Sir John Lavery, a portrait artist to royalty, and the other with Michael Collins, the daring Irish rebel whose fiery spirit ignited her heart. Together, they formed a love triangle that echoed through the corridors of power at 10 Downing Street, London.

Hazel’s wit and charm touched the lives of the who’s who of England, including Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Evelyn Waugh. The image of her memorable face graced the Irish note for close to half a century…

Full details and booking information are available at this link.