–A profile of author David Pryce-Jones has been posted on the website Onward and Upward. This is written by Jay Nordlinger and is a well-written, concise survey of Pryce-Jones’s life and works. Here’s an excerpt:
…Over the years, I have learned a great deal from David Pryce-Jones. I have learned it through his books and articles, and in person. What subjects has he taught me about?
Well, literature and the arts. History, especially 20th-century history, but the history of other periods, too. The Soviet Union and Communism. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The Middle East. Etc., etc.
He has written books about Cyril Connolly and Graham Greene. (He is also the editor of a compilation about Evelyn Waugh.) One of his works of history is The Hungarian Revolution. His book about the collapse of the Soviet Union is The War That Never Was. (In America, it was published as âThe Strange Death of the Soviet Empire.â)
David was acquainted with the Mitfords, one of whom loved Hitler. That was Unity, of whom we have a biography from David. His book Paris in the Third Reich will likely rivet you, and leave a mark on you. It has inspired poetry and music…
The Waugh compilation was entitled Evelyn Waugh and His World and was published in 1973 in both the UK and US.
–As it turns out, the mention of the Pryce-Jones compilation of Waugh articles coincides with one of the topics covered in a recent conference in Croatia that has been posted on YouTube. This is the article by Freddie Birkenhead entitled “Fiery Particles” about his visit to the mission to which Waugh and Randolph Churchill were attached in wartime Yugoslavia. The recent conference considers Waugh’s report that was entitled “Church and State in Liberated Croatia” and was submitted to the Foreign Office in April 1945.
The conference was called Liberation or Enslavement: Eighty Years After the End of the War in Europe, and was convened 8-9 July 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia. The specific paper discussing Waugh’s report was delivered by Croatian academic Mario Jareb and was entitled “Evelyn Waugh and the Partisans”. The discussion is available on YouTube at this link. Jareb somewhat misleadingly announces that Waugh’s report is now widely available. It was published in 1992 in the September issue of The Salisbury Review but, so far as I know, has not been reprinted in any collection of Waugh’s works. It may be accessible over the internet but I have never tried to access it.
–Harry Mount writing on The Oldie’s website discusses the announcement of a new museum to be devoted to the preservation and display of illustrations. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Harry Mount visits Britain’s first illustration centre. Drawings by Quentin Blake, who founded and funded it, are about to be on show at the Lowry, Salford, and the Bankside Gallery
At last, Britain is to have a gallery devoted to illustration!
Named after Quentin Blake â and generously endowed by him â the gallery will open in 2026. It will be housed in forgotten Georgian and Victorian industrial buildings in a lost corner of Islington.
For 250 years, from the days of Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank till now, weâve had some of the greatest illustrators and cartoonists. And yet weâve always treated them as the second-rate cousins of so-called âfine artistsâ.
When Ronald Searle (1920-2011) â the finest British cartoonist of the last century, creator of the immortal Molesworth and the St Trinianâs girls â died, he left his complete works to the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover.
There was no equivalent British place to bequeath his archive to. There is now…
Blake is responsible for the illustrated covers of Waugh’s works in the initial series of Modern Classics published by Penguin. Those would make an admirable display which we can now look forward to.
–The publishers Routledge have announced the reissuance of a 1991 book by William Myers entitled Evelyn Waugh and the Problem of Evil. Here are the details:
Originally published in 1991, this elegantly written book offers new readers a useful approach to the work of Evelyn Waugh and will persuade those familiar with it to look at it afresh. This introduction to Waughâs novels places them high in the catalogue of great fiction. It claims for them an intellectual coherence, subtlety and seriousness which Waughâs disconcerting comic gifts and extravagant public and writing persona have tended to put in the shade. In addressing the nature of Waughâs comic writing William Myers has borrowed George Batailleâs concept of Evil as a convenient way of dealing with the most troubling and exciting aspects of Waughâs work: its sadism, its childish irresponsibility, its fascination with lunacy and death.
Table of Contents:
1.Vorticists: Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies 2. Barbarians: Black Mischief, A Handful of Dust and Scoop 3. Arcadians: Work Suspended, Put Out More Flags and Brideshead Revisited 4. Exiles: Scott-Kingâs Modern Europe, the short stories The Loved One, Helena and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold 5. Warriors: Sword of Honour (Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender).
Further details are available here.
