–Journalist Eleanor Doughty has made a career of writing articles about the British aristocracy. Now she has expanded her writing on the subject into a book entitled Heirs and Graces: A History of the Modern British Aristocracy. This has just been published by Hutchinson Heinemann in the UK and is reviewed in The Spectator and Financial Times.
The Spectator’s review is by Anne de Courcy who says that the book “tells us much of [the aristocracy’s] family history and charts their progress [from the end of WWII] under headings taken from the novels of Evelyn Waugh.” She includes two examples of aristocratic love affairs from one extreme (10th Duke of Beaufort) to the other (11th Duke of Argyll). These are discussed under a heading entitled “Vile Bodies”. Under another heading (“Brideshead Revisited”), she discusses how National Trust stewardship and enterprising estate owners on their own made access to estates more open the public, while improving the incomes and living conditions of the owners. The review concludes with this:
“…As Doughty points out, that ‘aristocratic way has proved remarkably resilient and slow to alter.’ Or as Evelyn Waugh might have put it, decline, certainly–but not fall.”
The full review can be read on PressReader.com.
Henry Mance reviews the book for the Financial Times. His thoughtful, balanced and thorough review concludes with this:
…Doughty draws from a huge number of interviews, rather than, say, observing aristocrats at dinners or parties. (As a woman, she wouldn’t be allowed into White’s, the club of choice, anyway.)
This is not a book that questions the origins of family fortunes, or peers’ role in imperial history, or the environmental ruin of the countryside. Aristocrats and the gentry still own about 30 per cent of England. At least the Duke of Westminster paid for free ice cream in Chester when he got married last year.
Yet Heirs & Graces underlines how well privileged people do in public life. … Only 18 people have disclaimed their peerages since 1963, starting famously with the Labour politician Tony Benn.
Many peers quoted by Doughty claim not to care much about the titles. She wisely takes such claims with a pinch of salt — just as she notes how some aristocrats claim poverty but drive new, very expensive cars. The aristocracy may be antiquated, but it is a side of Britain that refuses to die.
–Evelyn Waugh’s grand-daughter Daisy Waugh has just written another book. This one, like its two most recent predecessors, is a comedy. Its title is Anarchy: Ozias Plume saves the world. Here’s the description from Amazon.com:
A LAUGHING EPIDEMIC IS SWEEPING THE NATION!
Four months ago, terminally gloomy tech billionaire, Ozias Plume, caught a laughing virus that made him see the funny side of life. The virus made him so happy, he felt duty-bound to spread it around the world. He started with little ol’ England… And now the miserable Brits won’t stop laughing.It’s a nightmare for the UK authorities.
Fines are imposed. A public inquiry is launched. A state of emergency is declared.
… and STILL the people laugh…
The book is issued by Fisher King Publishing and is available in the US, in paperback only, at the price of $12.08. Here’s a link to Amazon.com.
–The blogger G B H Hornswoggler, posting on his website “Antique Musings”, has written an article about Waugh 1930s travel book Ninety-Two Days. Here are the opening paragraphs:
I doubt there is a travel book with as much of a throw-my-hands-up title as Evelyn Waugh’s Ninety-Two Days. It’s as if he was saying, “Look, I went to a place and spent some time there, and this is the book I wrote about it. Can’t say it any more clearly than that.”
I’m getting the sense that Waugh’s travel books were often, perhaps always aimless and faintly mercenary – his older brother Alec had, I believe, already made a successful career as a travel writer, and maybe it took some time for Evelyn Waugh’s novels to be seen as the magnificent things they are. Whatever the reason, his travel books can be close to the pure old-fashioned “I am an Englishman, one of the world’s aristocrats and a deeply cultured individual. I will go to This Strange and Foreign Land and tell you about it.”…
His is a link to the full text.
