4th of July (US) Roundup

Posted on July 2, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

–The Daily Telegraph has posted a letter from a reader who comments on Simon Heffer’s article on rereading Brideshead Revisited that was mentioned in our last posting:

SIR – Simon Heffer suggests that Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited “isn’t that good after all” (Hinterland, June 20).

I would argue that, as an elegy for the great country house and its inhabitants, which were in decline in the second half of the 20th century, the novel is unique.

Fortunately, Waugh’s pessimism was only partly justified. Though a great number of such houses were demolished in the year’s following the novel’s publication, a surprising number still exist and remain in the hands of families that built them. They are a significant part of our shared heritage.

For the way it deals with this important subject, Brideshead stands apart from Waugh’s other novels, as well as those of his contemporaries.

Robin Bryer, Yeovil, Somerset

The letter is reproduced in the Telegraph’s 23 June 2026 issue under the heading Rereading Brideshead.

–Vice President J. D. Vance has written a book entitled Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. This had been widely reviewed, and the following comments appeared as the opening paragraph of the review on the Substack website Quillette:

The novelist Evelyn Waugh was once asked how he reconciled his lousy personal behaviour—which included drunkenness, antisemitism, and cruelty to friends and foes alike—with his Catholic faith. No one could imagine, Waugh replied, how vile he would have been were he not a Catholic. That retort came to mind as I read US vice president JD Vance’s new book, Communion, about his conversion to Catholicism. Since joining the Church of Rome in 2019, Vance has not exactly been a paragon of virtue. Once an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, whom he called “America’s Hitler,” he changed his tune as soon as he needed Trump’s endorsement. (“I need to just suck it up and support him,” he confessed.)…

The full review is available at this link. A similar point may have been made in a review by Gerard Baker in the Wall Street Journal but is unavailable without a subscription.

–Another Substack post also contains a discussion about Waugh. This relates to his breakdown which he described in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Here is the opening:

What happens when a master of sharp, satirical prose completely loses his grip on reality in the middle of the Indian Ocean?

The Legend of Evelyn Waugh and His Literary Madness

By the 1950s, British novelist Evelyn Waugh had become well-respected for his early satirical novels Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, and Brideshead Revisited.

But then in the winter of 1954, he suffered a terrible stint of writer’s block. Struggling to bring words to the page, he boarded a cruise ship bound for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), hoping a change of scenery would spark his creativity again.

He was seeking inspiration and adventure. Instead, he stepped into a real-life psychological horror story…

The full article by Julie Cantrell is available here.

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Juneteenth (US) Roundup

Posted on June 20, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

–Simon Heffer has written for the Daily Telegraph an article entitled: “Never mind the lavish TV series–Brideshead Revisited is a woefully overrated novel: Time has not improved Waugh’s celebrated classic, whose glamour disguises a surprisingly joyless vision of humanity”.  The article opens with this history of Heffer’s readings of the novel:

I feel I missed the right time of life to read Brideshead Revisited, the novel which Waugh with an apparently straight face, described as his “magnum opus”. I was about 17 when I first devoured it and found it highly devouring, though even in the arrogance of youth, I realised I probably wasn’t “getting” all of it. Now, almost half a century later, I have just read it again, and realise I should almost certainly have revisited Brideshead Revisited about 25 years ago when I was the same age as the central character (I resist saying “hero” because he isn’t one), Charles Ryder. Then I might have “got” it more profoundly. Now, characters and situations that seemed devilishly funny when I was an impressionable youth seem simply ghastly, and I wonder whether this highly acclaimed novel is actually half as good as most think it is…

What follows is an admittedly biased but thorough, accurate and entertaining summary of the novel from Heffer’s present point of view. He concludes with this:

…On my re-reading, I was overcome by the utter bleakness of the story. Waugh was brutally cynical from birth and a pretty unpleasant man, but the war and the upheaval of society in which he felt reasonably comfortable poisoned his spirit. With the exception of Cordelia, the Marchmain’s youngest child, who had the makings of a saint, every major character in the book and most of the minor ones are rather loathsome, usually because they are so self-obsessed and morally defective. Although Lady Marchmain and Lord Brideshead, her elder son, are devout, they are also obnoxious in their narrow-mindedness. Waugh’s ridicule, notably of Charles’s cranky father, now seem overdone, and the humour of the snobbery soon wears thin. I am in no doubt that Brideshead Revisited is a book that every intelligent person should read, but only once, and preferably in early middle age.

A link to the full article is available here but it may require a subscription to open it. I may say that some specific mention of Anthony Blanche as being among the memorable characters might have been appreciated.

–The Rising Tide Foundation has posted on YouTube the recording of a lecture entitled “How the British Empire Created and Destroyed Orwell”. The lecturer is Martin Sieff. The recording (presumably with Q&A) runs for about 2 hours. Here is the description of a 8 minute segment:

[12:04] – The Paradoxical Contemporary: George Orwell vs. Evelyn Waugh A fascinating contrast between two literary giants who deeply admired yet utterly baffled one another—the secular socialist who loathed empire versus the traditionalist Catholic monarchist who loved it.

The entire lecture and the summary may be accessed here.

—Literary Review has posted the review of a book by Ollie Randall about the literary side of the game of cricket. This is entitled Writers in Whites: How a Group of Literary Cricketeers Changed English Culture. The Waugh brothers make a contribution according to the LR’s review:

…[J.M.] Barrie also enlisted the services of Alec Waugh, a capable batsman whose first novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), was well received. Shortly after its publication, Waugh was captured on the Western Front, the event ‘generating a burst of headlines’, and spent the rest of the war in a fortress at Mainz. His younger brother, Evelyn, wrote a sour account of his only outing on the field of play, while Alec recorded that his ‘attempts to teach [Evelyn] cricket inculcated in him a permanent repugnance for the game’…

The full review is available here.

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Early June Roundup

Posted on June 8, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

–The British Medical Journal has posted an article from 1975 in which a professional psychiatrist reviews the 1957 novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. This appeared in the December 1975 issue of the professional magazine. The author is identified as Eliot Slater. The first page of the article has been reproduced and posted on the internet. Here is an excerpt from that page in which Dr. Slater describes Waugh’s book as:

“…a novel and not a medical document. A lot of novelist’s work has gone into it, with its elaborately interwoven conspiracies and hallucinatory voices speaking in perfect syntax. Nevertheless, one finds evidence that Waugh’s psychotic episode was passed in a state of clouded consciousness. Pinfold describes defective memories and disorientation in time. Most telling of all, the characters of the story have not been observed at all, least of all with Waugh’s habitually penetrating and sardonic eye. The story is an absurdity. Gilbert Pinfold is presented as a hero of titanic strength. He defends himself against his persecutors, confident he will be the victor. He unravels the “truth” of the conspiracies, defies the conspirators, reduces them to pleading for mercy, and eventually to silence. On return home he sees no priest, no psychiatrist, no medical specialist. He knows that he has endured “a great ordeal and, unaided, had emerged the victor.” Waugh v the Powers of Hell.

Given his personality it is no wonder that Evelyn Waugh had a paranoid psychosis; the wonder is that it needed drug intoxication, on top of alcoholism and his increasing deafness, to produce it. He got no promotion in the Army all through the war because of his total unfitness to be an officer. He could not be put in command of men because he bullied them and he hated them. He antagonised others by his delight in causing offence or by his own ostentatious indiscipline. Unaware of his failings, he put it all down to plots and machinations…

Dr. Slater was obviously aware of Waugh’s own personal response to the Pinfold episode which included medical and religious intervention. He mentions the Sykes biography, which was published the same year as the BMJ’s article, where these details are revealed (Sykes, Penguin, pp. 485ff). He may well address that historic response in the later pages of his article. The remainder of the article apparently may be viewed on the BMJ’s website which is available at this link. It is not mentioned in Waugh’s bibliography which appeared in 1986 and I cannot recall seeing it cited in later articles. Dr. Slater does include it among the extensive list of his publications in his archives. These are available here.

—The Daily Telegraph has an article about the unfinished cathedral in Barcelona which Waugh described in his 1930 travel book Labels (ch. VI). The article is entitled “La Sagrada Familia is Gaudi’s masterpiece. It’s also hideous.” In the article, author Stephen Bayley explains how the design and construction of Barcelona church differs from the usual  cathedrals. He notes that Orwell, who saw it a few years after Waugh, had thought it so defective that it should be torn down. The article concludes with this:

…Evelyn Waugh was more enthused by La Sagrada Família than Orwell. He visited in 1930 and it reminded him of the terrible bungalow communities on the South Coast. Thinking, perhaps of Peacehaven, Waugh found in Barcelona: “The same eagerness to attract attention”. He saw an “irresponsible confusion of architectural styles”. Gaudí, Waugh said, broke through “all boundaries of order and propriety”. This he did, leaving others to tidy up after him.

But the great thing about La Sagrada Família is what it tells us about ugliness and its place in our culture. And this is that ugliness is not boring, while sterile perfection often is. Mies van der Rohe’s hyper-modernist 1929 Barcelona Pavilion has been rebuilt on its original site. The Catalan tourist authorities are not much moved to promote it, beautiful as it may be.

As for the architect, in 1926 Gaudí was run over by a tram on the Gran via de les Corts Catalanes. He was looking so shabby, officials took several days to identify the body.

The complete article is available here.

There is also an article about the Barcelona church posted on the website Prufrock. This is by Micah Mattix and contains an extensive quote from Waugh’s travel book Labels. The article concludes with this:

…If you have never read Waugh’s Labels, summer is the perfect time, and Waugh is at his best in the book. Here’s the first sentence: “I did not really know where I was going, so, when anyone asked me, I said to Russia. Thus my trip started, like an autobiography, upon a rather nicely qualified basis of falsehood and self-glorification.” Perfect.

Here’s a link.

–London bookseller Peter Harrington has on offer a first edition copy of Work Suspended with an interesting back story:

First edition, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Frank from Evelyn, Christmas 1942”, and housed in a fine onlaid folding box. The recipient was his friend Frank Pakenham, later Lord Longford, an old associate from Oxford, the godfather of Waugh’s son Auberon, and a companion with whom Waugh spent Christmas 1930 at Pakenham Hall in Westmeath, Ireland.

During their university years, Pakenham (1905-2001) edited the Oxford Fortnightly Review, which announced that “Evelyn Waugh made a perilous but successful journey to Oxford the week before last on Queensbury, his new motor-bicycle, and a few were privileged to watch him, leather-coated and leather-helmeted, pushing it along the Corn in a gallant but blasphemous effort to shame [it] into some sort of activity” (cited in Stannard, p. 123). Waugh wrote to him about his place as a writer during wartime, stating that the conflict’s “chief use would be to cure artists of the illusion that they were men of action”, a lesson Waugh admits he learned slower than Pakenham (Carpenter, p. 351).

Work Suspended was the title given to the fragments of a novel Waugh abandoned to take up active service, not published until his return. It is one of 500 copies printed.

The book is on offer for £4,000. Here’s a link.

–After facing much criticism for its recent list of the 100 best novels based on a survey of literary critics and journalists, the Guardian has conducted a survey of its readers. While nothing by Waugh appeared in the first list, Brideshead Revisited appears as No. 75 in the more recent one. The entry also includes this comment:

Declan Durrant, South Australia, 28: “It is the great novel from possibly the greatest prose stylist of the 20th century. Creamy and redolent with excess and guilt and moral decay in a lost England which, perhaps, never existed – and if it did, maybe shouldn’t have.”

The entire list can be accessed through this link.

—Literary Review has published a review of the recent book that is a history of the writing and publication of the novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover. This is entitled Flailing Fornication and is written by Guy Cuthbertson. The review is by Duncan Fallowell. Here is an excerpt from the opening paragraphs:

…Unsurprisingly, Lady C is replete with drama and farce. We learn that the novel’s passionate admirers included W B Yeats, Philip Larkin, Hermann Hesse, Stevie Smith, Norman Mailer, Anaïs Nin, Tennessee Williams, E M Forster, Madonna and David Bowie. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath revered it; for Plath, Hughes became a Mellors-gamekeeper fantasy. The haters included Evelyn Waugh, Edith Sitwell, W H Auden and Enid Blyton. F R Leavis did not admit the novel into the Lawrentian canon because, as Cuthbertson perceptively observes, it ‘was a book Leavis was not in control of’. T E Lawrence delivered the classic dismissal of those who can’t cope with Eros at all: ‘Surely the sex business isn’t worth all this damned fuss?’ …

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Donat Gallagher (12 June 1929 – 17 January 2026) R.I.P.

Posted on June 5, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

The death in January of Professor Donat Gallagher was reported in a recent posting by the Australian literary magazine Quadrant. Professor Gallagher has been among the leading experts on the life and works of Evelyn Waugh since the 1970s. He wrote and edited several books and articles about Waugh, most notably the collected journalism in Essays, Articles and Reviews (1983). He was on the faculty of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia and was living there in retirement at the time of his death at the age of 96. He was active in the Evelyn Waugh Society’s activities and made the long trip from Australia (with his wife, Mary, who survives him) to participate in its conferences. A more detailed description of Prof. Gallagher’s life and work by Mark McGinness is available on Quadrant. 

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End-of-Month Roundup

Posted on May 31, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

—The Modernist Review has posted an article relating to Alec Waugh’s 1917 book Loom of Youth in which he described his school days at Sherborne. The book is well known among Evelyn Waugh enthusiasts because it resulted in Evelyn’s  being barred from admission at his preferred boarding school, Sherborne. It also resulted in a little known law suit several years later in 1932 as is explained in the opening paragraphs of the Modernist Review article by Thomas Bate entitled “Loom and Doom: New Light on the Waugh v. Lewis Libel Action.”

One could hardly imagine two more different works than The Loom of Youth (1917) and Doom of Youth (1932). The former, the first novel of Alec Waugh (elder brother of Evelyn), was a boy’s account of a boys’ school, which became controversial principally because of a brief passage suggesting homosexuality in the dormitories. Published when Waugh was barely 21, The Loom of Youth drew directly from his experiences at Sherborne School, from which he had been expelled — a circumstance that would later prompt his parents to send his younger brother Evelyn to Lancing College instead. The novel’s frank portrayal of public school life, with its hints at same-sex relationships among the boys, caused a sensation and marked Alec Waugh as a voice of his generation’s disillusionment with traditional institutions.

The latter publication, by the vituperative writer and painter Wyndham Lewis, was a savage satirical assault on what he perceived as the shallow hedonism and intellectual bankruptcy of post-war youth culture. Published in 1932, Doom of Youth represented Lewis at his most provocative and combative, railing against the very generation that [Alec] Waugh had seemed to champion. Where Waugh’s novel had been sympathetic to the struggles of young men coming of age in oppressive institutional settings, Lewis’s polemic was a sustained attack on youth itself as a cultural phenomenon, dismissing the concerns and perspectives of the younger generation as fundamentally worthless.

But Lewis’s provocative choice of title was clearly aimed at Waugh’s earlier success, a deliberate echo designed to position his own work as a riposte to The Loom of Youth. The similarity was no accident — Lewis, ever the polemicist, had crafted his title as both homage and hostile takeover, suggesting that he was the corrective for the Waugh brothers’ obsession with youth culture. This calculated provocation would prove to be more costly than Lewis anticipated…

The resulting litigation over the Lewis book is described in the article which is available at this link.

–Hungarian academic Ferenc Hörcher has posted a copy of his 2022 article on Waugh’s war trilogy. This was originally published in Hungarian Review and is entitled “History and Grace: Anti-communism in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour.” Here is an excerpt from the opening paragraphs:

“Sword of Honour, written during the Cold War (1952–1961), was meant to provide
a general account of British participation in the Second World War, with an eye
to its aftermath, since the global conflict was widely seen as having strengthened
communist Russia. Its author, a popular writer of the age, was himself a traditional
Conservative who was nevertheless an ardent critic of the British prime minister
and wartime leader, Winston Churchill. Waugh participated in the war, and his
experiences led him to a pessimistic view of the leadership of the British Army,
and in particular of British participation in the Balkans. He did not agree with
the shift of British support from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Tito’s partisans
in the war’s final stage. His critical attitude towards the British war effort led
him to write a report directly to the government, and his literary efforts to record
what happened there included—beside the later Sword of Honour—an earlier short
story entitled Compassion.”

The full article is available for download here.

—The Oldie has posted an article by Ferdinand Mount on the career of artist Henry Lamb. He is well known to Waugh’s readers as the artist who painted Waugh’s portrait at age 26 which adorns the cover of the 1973 collection, Evelyn Waugh and his World. Mount’s article is inspired by an exhibit of Lamb’s work that also includes a portrait of Mount. The exhibit recently opened in Salisbury. Here’s a description:

A new show, Bloomsbury in Wiltshire, (Saturday May 23 – Sunday September 27, 2026) features the work of artist Henry Lamb. Lamb drew – and romanced – the Bloomsbury Group, fought in the First World War and, in 1957, painted his 18-year-old nephew, Ferdinand Mount

Whether the earlier Waugh portrait is included in the exhibition is not stated in either The Oldie’s article or the exhibition gallery’s description (see link). The exhibition is in the Salisbury Museum in Wiltshire.

–The Daily Express has an article by Molly Toolan declaring that the 1981 TV adaptation by ITV of Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited is recognized as the best adaptation of all time. Here are some excerpts:

Period drama, released in 1981, Brideshead Revisited was the choice of Lit Hub in its The 50 Greatest Literary TV Adaptations Ever Ranking. The TV series was adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s novel of the same name. Derek Granger created the series that stars Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews…

The series has been hailed by many fans and critics, and publications, with Time magazine listing it in its list of the 100 best TV shows of all time. It has received 83% from both the critics and the fans on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Probably the best TV adaptation of all time,” said one fan of the series.

Another fan wrote in their review: “A brilliant adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel with exceptional performances by all, especially Jeremy Irons. One of the most memorable productions in any film format I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s simply one of the best productions ever made for TV from a beloved novel. The characters. Acting. Writing. Music. Sets. Stories. Clothes etc – just perfect. I watched it as a teenager when it first aired, and I’ve been watching it this week. It’s so good,” another added.

–Terry Eagleton has written an article entitled “Why Aristocrats Are Funny”. This is posted on the website UnHerd. Here is an excerpt:

…A lot of humor depends on laws and prohibitions, since without them we would have nothing to transgress, and transgression is usually pleasurable. Deviating from a norm can take the form of eccentricity, especially in England. The English love what they call “a character”, like the Oxford don I once knew who used to stand in a pub with a cavalier air and a parrot on his shoulder. (His cavalier air was shaken only by his obvious fear that the bird might crap on his shoulder.) People who stick ferrets down their trousers or ride to work on a baby rhino are likely to be honored by Buckingham Palace. The upper class in particular are transgressive, since they regard themselves as superior to codes and conventions, even though they often set them themselves. Brian Howard, one of the louche Evelyn Waugh set, was once arrested by the police in an illicit drinking den in Soho. When asked for his name and address, he replied: “My name is Brian Howard, I live in Berkeley Square, and you, Inspector, I suppose, come from some dreary little suburb.”…

NOTE (31 May 2026): Thanks to Dave Lull for pointing out some name confusion on my part among the various Waughs.

 

 

 

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Memorial Day (US)/Bank Holiday (UK) Roundup

Posted on May 23, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

–The latest issue of The Oldie has an article by Robert Fitzpatrick entitled “The Real Captain Grimes”. Here’s the opening paragraph:

In his 1928 novel, Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh created one of his most famous comic characters, Captain Grimes. A short, alcoholic, one-legged schoolmaster with a history of pederasty, he teaches at Llanabba Castle, a prep school in North Wales. The school was based on Arnold House, where Waugh taught between January and July 1925. Grimes reveals that he was removed from his public school shortly after his 16th birthday, although he was helped on his way with a letter of recommendation from his housemaster: ‘That’s the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.’ He also confesses that he was moved on from several teaching positions in the past. ‘Funny thing, I can always get on all right for about six weeks, and then I land in the soup.’…

The article continues with the explanation that “Captain Grimes was based on a schoolmaster, Richard Young” who also taught at Arnold House. The article is behind a paywall but is available to subscription holders at this link.

—The Times has published an obituary of photographer Mark Gerson whose death was noted in a previous post. The Times article offers more details than previous obituaries relating to the first of Gerson’s two visits to Waugh’s home in Combe Florey:

…When Mark Gerson received a call from a literary agent asking if he might photograph Evelyn Waugh at his country pile in 1959, the offer was not an immediately enticing one. Waugh was a notoriously prickly man and his loathing of the press was well documented. Plus, Waugh didn’t want to pay; instead, Gerson was permitted to take pictures of anything he liked and retain the copyright.

Gerson “agreed with alacrity” — this was Evelyn Waugh, after all — and off he sped to Somerset with his wife in a beaten-up Vauxhall Cresta. Midway through the journey the car broke down. They called a mechanic and, after some trepidation, the Waugh household. The reply was frosty. The family was waiting for their lunch — could the Gersons be as quick as possible?

The couple arrived an hour later to find Waugh’s children sitting sullenly at the table and helped themselves to a plate of fish from the sideboard. Waugh muttered gruffly whether all photographers had to rush around in such an absurd manner, and after lunch he disappeared. Following a perfunctory tour of the house from Waugh’s wife, Laura, the Gersons settled into the local pub for the evening and returned the following day. Again, no sign of Waugh, who curtly apologised later for not being present to point out “more interesting pieces of furniture”.

In the afternoon, Waugh reappeared in a merrier mood. Gerson took photographs of him smoking a cigar and writing with his ancient quill pen in his study, and shots of the family (including his son, Auberon, who was convalescing after accidentally shooting himself in the chest while on army duty in Cyprus). Evelyn requested no colour shots because “I come out looking all pink”. Gerson took no notice and later, when he presented the photos, Waugh’s only comment was that “they will please the simple tastes of my Italian servants”.

In a letter, Waugh sternly rebuked Gerson for not taking more time over the dining room — “it was careless of you to leave the gin bottles,” he wrote, “and not display more of the silver” — and asked him to refrain from sharing his address to the rapacious press, but he enclosed a signed copy of A Handful of Dust…

The Times article, which is unattributed, may have been based on Gerson’s papers which would probably include correspondence from Waugh. The full article, which offers more details on other points not perviously discussed, is available here.

–A literary website called instaread.co has a review of a recent autobiography by Graydon Carter. This was entitled When the Going Was Good. Here’s the introductory paragraph:

In When the Going Was Good (2025), Graydon Carter recounts his rise from a struggling Canadian newcomer in New York to one of the most influential magazine editors of his era. He built momentum at major publications, co-founded Spy, and led Vanity Fair under Si Newhouse. Carter offers an insider’s view of elite cultural circles while describing how he assembled a remarkable team and steered Vanity Fair to prominence. His memoir captures the energy, ambition, and fading glamour of the print magazine’s golden age. The title, When the Going Was Good, is a reference to Evelyn Waugh’s collected travel writing, published a few years before Carter was born. Carter recently reread the book and felt it aged better than him…

The full review is accessible here.

–A website called Fourble.co.uk has posted a podcast recording of an earlier dramatized version of Waugh’s novel The Loved One. This is probably a 1990 Radio 4 version that was broadcast by the BBC. Here’s the introduction:

Hollywood, 1947. Failed poet/screenwriter Dennis Barlow disgraces Hollywood’s British community by taking a job in a pets’ cemetery.

He is given the chance to redeem himself by arranging a colleague’s funeral, but love rather than redemption looms at the Whispering Glades Funeral Home.

Starring Rupert Graves and Miranda Richardson.

Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 satire on the American way of death.

Dramatised in three parts by Bill Matthews…

Full cast and other details are available here. Whether and on what terms this podcast is available outside the UK is presumably also available on the Fourble.co.uk home page.

–Sotheby’s has on offer a signed UK first edition of Black Mischief. Among other features this book includes “the original patterned faux-snakeskin cloth, with spine lettered in gilt, in the unclipped wrapper, accompanied by the rare Book Society ‘Book of the Month For October’ wrap-around band.” The asking price is $10,000. Here’s a link to the details.

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Roundup: A List, a Classic and a New Book

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

—The Guardian’s recent selection of the “Top 100 Novels” has left many readers disappointed. The Spectator has an article by Michael Henderson explaining why, at least in his case:

…There are always going to be notable omissions, because no list can represent 250 years of novel writing in a way that satisfies all tastes. But when a ‘Hot Hundred’ finds room for Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, as the Guardian’s does, and no place anywhere for Evelyn Waugh, one wonders about the judges’ sanity.

Waugh – it has been said so often, it is now the stuff of cliché – wrote the most beautiful prose in English in the 20th century. To exclude him from a list of this sort is like writing a history of jazz without reference to Duke Ellington.

Miss Dangarembga may be a good writer, though it’s unlikely her book, which sits at position 74, should be higher placed than Hardy’s The Return of the Native (at 95), DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow (77), and Mann’s Buddenbrooks (81). But what do Hardy, Lawrence and Mann matter when you’re trying – as the Guardian is – to rewire the imagination of your readers?…

The article continues with identifications of several other examples of the weakness of the article’s selections. The full article is available here.

–The religious/philosophical magazine First Things has an article by its editor R. R. Reno on Waugh’s war trilogy Sword of Honour. It is entitled “Quantitive Judgements Don’t Apply” and opens with this:

For years I have aspired to read Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. But bound together the three novels (Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of the Battle) make for a weighty volume. Where to find the time? Friends in North Carolina overcame my lassitude. Their book group took up Sword of Honour. Would I join them? I could in spirit, if not in person. So, I bought a copy and, transfixed, I read the 800 pages very nearly in a single sitting.

The bulk of Sword of Honour concerns military life. Waugh enlisted in 1939 at the outset of the war, and he served until its end in 1945. Like other novels about World War II, Sword of Honour depicts immobile bureaucracies, eccentric commanders, and the way in which so much energy is expended on pointless enterprises. Midway through the narrative, Waugh describes the chaotic retreat of British forces on the island of Crete after they fail to repulse the German invasion. Across these justly praised pages, Waugh captures the combat’s confusion and its atmosphere of soul-wearying futility…

The remainder of the article contains an excellent review of the book and why it is worth reading. Here’s a link.

–The US-based Jesuit journal America has published a review of the recent British book Converts by Melanie McDonagh. Here are the opening paragraphs:

It is still a little hard to believe.

Over a period of 70 years, in the final decades of the British empire, a group of highly talented artists and writers decided to become, of all things, Roman Catholic. These were, in the words of Melanie McDonagh in her new book Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century, people of “blazing individuality,” the sort of folks you would love to have a drink with but maybe wouldn’t expect to find in church. But that’s where they wound up, and boy is it fun to spend some time with them.

McDonagh gives us a rollicking account of these men and women as they make their way across the Tiber. Some of these individuals are well known (Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark), others less so (the writer Maurice Baring, the artist David Jones). McDonagh’s overarching question is simple: Why did they choose to do this? Fortunately for us, there is plenty of raw material in the form of letters and essays describing their spiritual journeys…

The review by Maurice Timothy Reidy continues with several interesting cites to the book’s observations and conclusions, some of which refer to those of Waugh. Here’s a link.

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Waugh Event in Beverly Hills

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

The Greystone Mansion and Gardens in Beverly Hills (also known as the Doheny Estate) has announced a special showing of The Loved One. This is scheduled for next Thursday evening (21 May). The house was the setting for several scenes from the film. Here is a copy of the announcement:

Visit 1965 Greystone in this dark comedy about the funeral industry, inspired by a short novel by Evelyn Waugh. The cast includes Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer, Rod Steiger, John Gielgud, Liberace, and more. This event will start with a tour of locations used in the film at 6:30, followed by the movie.

Greystone In The Movies showcases films with a connection to Greystone Mansion & Gardens and includes a tour of the areas used during filming when possible. Typically one film is shown each month. Films are shown in our historic theatre, restored in 2020.

Details of the location and ticketing are available at this link.

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Roundup: Waugh in the Papers

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

–The papers last week reported that the James Tait Black literary awards for this year are in jeopardy due to a labor dispute at Edinburgh University. Here’s an excerpt from the Edinburgh Evening News:

The UK’s old­est lit­er­ary prize, which counts DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh among its pre­vi­ous win­ners, looks set to be scrapped this year for the first time in its his­tory amid strike action at the Uni­versity of Edin­burgh.

This year’s James Tait Black prize for fic­tion, awar­ded at the uni­versity since 1919, is in jeop­ardy after the lead judge said it was unlikely to go ahead due to a mar­ket­ing and assess­ment boy­cott.

Dr Han­nah Kate Boast said the uni­versity was with­hold­ing 100 per cent of her pay due to her par­ti­cip­a­tion in the boy­cott and said “at present, there will be no prize”…

Waugh received the award in 1952 for Men at War, the first volume of his war trilogy.

—The Times has an article about the history of public toilets in London. This is entitled “Spend a Penny”.  Here’s an excerpt noting a contribution by Evelyn Waugh:

… Provision for women lagged behind that for men. It was said that women avoided wearing underwear for Ladies Day at Royal Ascot in case they had to relieve themselves behind the shrubbery, and sadly the belief that a pregnant woman was legally entitled to urinate in a policeman’s helmet is an urban myth. As early as the 1850s the Ladies Sanitary Association was campaigning for “special erections”, while a public campaign for a women’s toilet in Camden took until 1905 to achieve its aim. Women were sometimes embarrassed about discussing such matters — Evelyn Waugh had a female friend who always referred to the “West Central” postcode area, as its abbreviation had “indelicate associations”.

–An article in The Spectator notes similarities between a currently popular TV series and an earlier example based on a Waugh novel. Here are the opening paragraphs:

At first glance, there are few similarities between Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh’s classic 1945 novel – later adapted into an equally classic ITV series – of prelapsarian bliss in Oxford and Industry, the BBC’s adrenaline-fuelled show that exposes the dark iniquity at the heart of the financial industry. The one is a languid examination of (discreetly portrayed) same-sex love and Catholic guilt, and the other is a profane, sexually charged and palpitation-inducing dive into hedonistic self-indulgence. Brideshead is plover’s eggs and Meursault; Industry class A drugs and group sex. They would seem as distinct from one another as chalk and (Comté) cheese.

Yet the continuing appeal of Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s show, now into its fourth season, is that it has as deep and innate an understanding of British high-end society as Waugh ever did, even if its expression is louder and more vulgar. Down and Kay were (of course) students who met at Oxford, and subsequently hit upon the idea of fictionalising their own experiences in investment banking. Both worked at Morgan Stanley, although that notoriously hard-nosed institution is milquetoast compared to the fiendishly pressurised Pierpoint & Co, the fictitious bank that lies at the dark heart of Industry. The very first episode begins with the death of a young banker who has been popping pills and glugging caffeinated energy drinks in order to keep up with the punishing regime that Pierpoint describes, and it only gets worse from then on…

–Max Hastings has an article in The Times about the centennial anniversary of the General Strike. He also reviews a new book about the event (Nine Days in May by Jonathan Sneer) and offers this reference to earlier writers’ descriptions of the events:

…The social highlights of the strike are the stuff of legend — debutantes running canteens at London stations and such novelists as Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell figuratively manning the barricades while their most repugnant Oxbridge contemporaries equipped themselves with truncheons and raced off to the East End as special constables, to beat up dockers: the Bullingdon Club spirit enjoying its happiest hour.

–Finally, the Androssan Herald in Scotland has a story about a WWII incident which lives on largely as a result of Evelyn Waugh’s description of it. Here is the introduction:

Back in 1942, at the height of World War II, No. 3 Commando were based in the North Ayrshire Estate, planning for the invasion of Europe.

Keen to keep in with the owner, Lord Glasgow, they agreed to get rid of an old tree stump in the grounds for him. But their decision to use explosives backfired… badly.

The story has been immortalised by Brideshead Revisited author Evelyn Waugh, who had recently joined 3. Commando and was stationed at Kelburn at the time…

The story then quotes at length Waugh’s letter to his wife about the event (Letters 160-61).

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Bank Holiday (UK) Roundup

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Jeffrey Manley

–The New Statesman has posted an article about the influence of the General Strike on British history. This is by Alwyn W. Turner  and is entitled “When Britain fought for revolution.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

A century on and still the definite article is used. The confrontation between the government and the trade unions that began on 4 May 1926 remains the General Strike, the only one Britain has seen. Perhaps that is its major legacy. The complete defeat of the strike, the capitulation of the union leaders after nine days, left a taste so bitter than there was a reluctance to repeat the experience. “It was as though a beast long fabled for its ferocity had emerged for an hour, scented danger, and slunk back to its lair,” wrote Evelyn Waugh 20 years later, in Brideshead Revisited.

Fictional portrayal of the Strike in Brideshead and Upstairs Downstairs tell it as a stories of posh chaps in plus fours volunteering to drive buses and lorries, and that largely remains the popular memory of the event. Even if this has faded in recent years – there was no depiction at all in Downton Abbey, for example – it has not been replaced by anything from the other side, that of the strikers. Instead, the most common image of the working class in the interwar period comes from a few years later with the pathetic dignity of the unemployed Jarrow Marchers, victims of circumstance, not active participants in events. All of which gives a somewhat distorted view of this turbulent period in British history, a moment of genuine revolutionary temper…

–A new book on Venice entitled “The Book Lover’s Guide to Venice” is being published. It is by Rachel Martin and is reviewed by Alexandra Lawrence. After discussing how the new guide compares with those previously printed and well established, the article concludes:

…I feel Evelyn Waugh put it best when he had his Brideshead Revisited protagonist, Charles Ryder, muse on his time in Venice: “I was drowning in honey, stingless.” And as [Rachel] Martin rightly says, somehow we know exactly what he means.

The full review is available on substack.com.

–In a Financial Times article focussing on what concerns are awakened by the Bank Holiday, Jo Elisson has written these opening paragraphs:

For most of Europe, this weekend is a bank holiday weekend. The traditional celebration that marks the birth of spring, May Day is rooted in the pagan festivals of Floralia (thanks to the Romans) and the Celtic Beltane. Fewer communities skip around the village maypole, or crown a May Queen, but the more subtle rituals beckoning summer are still indelibly part of our psyche. This weekend will see people putting on their gardening gloves, brunching on their balconies and more generally shifting into outdoor mode: I plan to enjoy a much overdue weekend hike in some verdant field somewhere in the countryside.

At the risk of sounding deeply pretentious, I cannot think of an English summer without recalling Evelyn Waugh. In the opening chapters of Brideshead Revisited the writer recalls “a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool’s-parsley… and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year”…

—The Guardian has an editorial on the Festival of Britain which opened on 3 May 1951. Here’s an excerpt:

…In 1951, almost 8.5 million people visited the South Bank site alone. The festival was a triumph for the Labour government. But it was not without its critics. Some saw it as a declining-empire bread-and-circuses ploy; others as a sign of a changing of the cultural guard. Evelyn Waugh disapproved. Noël Coward wrote a satirical song called Don’t Make Fun of the Fair. A month after the festival closed on 1 October, the new Conservative government demolished everything, apart from the Royal Festival Hall…

The link will take you to a 2001 article which elaborates on Waugh’s feelings about the Festival.

–An article citing Waugh’s views on Pope Pius V was posted recently in a religious journal. Here are the opening paragraphs:

About a year ago, I was talking to a senior Dominican brother of our community in Oxford – I won’t say who – and I admitted to him that I thought I was ‘too worldly’. To which he responded, ‘oh good!’.

Now we remember one of the most unworldly Dominicans, Pope Saint Pius V, the observant Dominican and austere reformer, and the greatest of the four Dominican popes. You can see Pius V’s unworldliness in his uncompromising political decisions, the most famous of which concerned the Queen of England.

Evelyn Waugh wrote about this episode: “He confided in no one and took counsel from very few … he prayed earnestly about the situation in England, and saw it with complete clarity; it was a question that admitted of no doubt whatever. Elizabeth [I] was illegitimate by birth, … she had deposed her bishops, issued a heretical Prayer Book and forbidden her subjects the comfort of the sacraments. No honourable Catholic could be expected to obey her.”

Pope Pius therefore excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I and not only absolved her subjects of obedience to her, but threatened them with excommunication if they did obey her. This was of course a convenient pretext for her courtiers to persecute Catholics, one which they took full advantage of…

The full article is available here.

 

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