–The New York Times has an opinion article in the Sunday edition that may be of interest. The columnist Carlos Lozada explains how he ruthlessly selects his summer beach reading in a way that really, REALLY assures he will choose the right books. Here’s an excerpt where he considers some books by Evelyn Waugh:
Category No. 3 is the most enjoyable, by definition. It’s the This Book Is Just for Fun books. “The Plot” by Jean Hanff Korelitz has been in this group since it became a thing in 2021, and this might be the year. (I’m a sucker for books about books, and the sequel, titled “The Sequel,” is already out, so enough time has passed to dabble in the original without being too obvious.) Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies” has been on the brink for a while — a British journalist I respect once told me it’s the best Waugh, though I still love “Scoop” and “Decline and Fall” — but I’m not quite feeling it for summer 2025. Someday, for sure.
—The Spectator (2 August 2025) has a review of Ferdinand Mount’s latest novel called The Pentecost Papers. Here are some excerpts from Mia Levitin’s review:
Ferdinand Mount has had an illustrious career, including posts as head of the No. 10 policy unit under Margaret Thatcher, literary and political editor of The Spectator and editor of the TLS. He is a prolific author to boot, with 29 fiction and non-fiction books under his belt. His latest novel, The Pentecost Papers, is an ‘ill-starred odyssey through an incurably slippery world’, he writes, ‘recorded by several hands–most of them unsteady’.
Our first narrator is Dickie Pentecost, a diplomatic correspondent (‘an anachronism,’ he admits, ‘like still keeping a hat-stand in the hall’). … The Pentecost Papers opens with Dickie meeting Timothy ‘Timbo’ Smith on a golf course, where the self-professed healer gives him an impromptu session for back pain. ‘And how do you feel now, Dickie?’ Timbo asks. ‘A bit like after you’ve had a good wank?’ While flustered by the presumptive camaraderie, Dickie indeed feels relaxed (‘drained in a sweet, languorous sort of way’), and begins seeing Timbo for treatment in the Mayfair offices of Ophion Research, the dubious ‘risk management’ company where he works by day. Having developed a friendship of sorts, Timbo asks Dickie to help him track down the grandson of his grandfather’s war buddy, killed in Normandy, in order to return a battered tobacco tin found among his possessions…
While contemporary in its subject matter, the novel offers the good old-fashioned pleasures of prose and plot. Its madcap antics and Waughian wit and wordplay are a joy, and a breath of fresh air in a landscape of contemporary literary fiction that tends to favour either affectlessness or earnestness. Despite Mount having less direct experience with hedge funds than politics, the details of the financial world in The Pentecost Papers, which he credits to multiple sources in the acknowledgements, don’t show it…
–The Spanish paper El Pais has an article by Ignacio Peyro entitled: “An Evelyn Waugh without nostalgia: ‘A Handful of Dust’ is considered the British writer’s most autobiographical novel and its pages collide Arcadian England with modernity.” This is in the Babelia literary section of the paper for 3 August 2025. It is a review of the recent translation of the book into Spanish by Carlos Villar Flor, mentioned in previous posts. After summarizing the plot and discussing the characters and their relation to Waugh’s life, the article concludes with this:
…In A Handful of Dust, Waugh offers us a moral-free parable about kindness, weakness, and destiny. Or, to use his own words, “a study of (…) domesticated savages, and how civilized man finds himself defenseless against them.” The novel rests on two constants of Waugh’s genius, perfectly summed up by Carlos Villar Flor and which here achieve particular virtuosity: “Verbal economy compatible with the most exquisite style.” Added to this is the narrator’s detached objectivity, which, with the help of dry humor, lends credibility and complexity to the tragicomic mix. Ultimately, we are faced with a Waugh of great substance, more modern and less nostalgic than he will ever be, but with the sparkle we expect from an easy-to-read English novel. Villar Flor’s translation and prologue portray him as what he is: A Spanish reference in English studies.
Translation is by Google.
–There is an offer on Ebay of a script for the 1960s film version of The Loved One. Here’s a description:
Draft script for the 1965 film, based on the 1948 novel by Evelyn Waugh, legendarily co-written by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood. Deluxe working script belonging to uncredited crew member William Todd Mason, with his name and phone number in manuscript ink on the title page, and some brief penciled annotations on three pages. Laid in is a corner stapled, three-page Staff and Crew list, with two name additions in manuscript red ink on the second page.
Included is a vintage studio still photograph from the film.
An early draft, issued nearly two years prior to the film’s October 1965 release, with substantial differences from the finished film.
The sister film to “Dr. Strangelove,” and in the eyes of many, just as much a masterpiece of exquisitely wrought black humor. Made in the US, but in a dense, British-American style. Ostensibly a satire on the funeral business, in which a young British poet winds up in a Hollywood cemetery as part of an inheritance arrangement—but in reality a satire of Hollywood itself, as well as the Western malaise of the mid 1960s.
Script: Self wrappers, presumably as this draft was issued. Title page present, rubber stamped copy No. 70, dated July 21, 1964, with credits for screenwriters Southern and Isherwood. 158 leaves, mimeograph duplication, with blue revision pages throughout, dated 7-22-64. Pages Fine, wrapper Fine, bound with two gold brads.
Staff and Crew listing: two leaves, slightly worn, with annotations on the second page.
The asking price is $4500.
–The website Flashbak has posted a 2021 interview of Waugh biographer Duncan McLaren. This was conducted before Duncan had completed the last chapters of his online biography but he was near the end when he was interviewed. It also contains an interesting autobiographical discussion of Duncan’s family life and education and how he became interested in Waugh and other writers.
NOTICE (11 August 2025): A more detailed reference to the review in El Pais was added after the initial post.
