–The LiteraryHub website has posted a poll in which it is seeking to determine the most popular TV adaptation of a novel. This follows its recent poll to determine the most popular film adaptation. It has posted a ballot of 60 nominated TV adaptations which can be voted on for selection over the next few days. Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited as adapted for Granada TV and first broadcast on ITV in 1981 is among the nominees. Here is the LitHub description:
Evelyn Waugh’s observant humanism was always in interesting tension with his sublimated (then blatant) conservatism. His best book, Brideshead Revisited, is nostalgic for aristocracy but clear eyed about its sins, mining the tensions between class values and personal connection. So much to say, this eleven episode miniseries succeeds by faithfully and reverently adapting the novel to the screen—this is about as much of a one-to-one translation from the page as you can imagine, with most of the dialogue coming directly from Waugh. The friendship that unfolds over a few decades before WWII between Charles Ryder and the rich Lord Sebastian Flyte of Brideshead Castle is subtly acted by Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. The rest of the cast is great too, and they’re allowed to mope and emote around beautiful location shoots. Laurence Olivier makes an appearance, as one might expect, and of course actor Peter Bull’s teddy bear named Delicatessen stuns as Aloysius. It’s a wonderful TV classic. –JF
Here is a link to the selection poll on the LitHub website.
—The Times newspaper has posted a list of Italian hotels which are recommended for pleasure travel accommodation. These are all located in restored palazzos, villas, etc. that are deemed more interesting and comfortable than the usual abodes. A Waugh character features in one description:
Downstairs the decor is like something Margot Beste-Chetwynde, the American heiress in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, might have commissioned. This is a mid-century modern collector’s dream, with gems including a bright-blue leather Eames lounge chair and a pair of 1930s Jindrich Halabala art deco armchairs, all arranged so you can see the skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Here is a link to the full list.
–Duncan McLaren has posted a report of his recent visit to Combe Florey which he says may complete his postings on Waugh and his life, work, friends and abodes. Here is a link:http://evelynwaugh.org.uk/styled-183/index.html. It is fully illustrated with updated photos of what will be a familiar site to many of our readers. Somehow, I don’t think it represents the last word we shall hear from Duncan on Waugh and his world, or at least I hope not.
