“Waugh, Auberon, Dog Lovers Party…”

Posted on June 4, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

In the final episode last night on BBC1 of A Very English Scandal, Auberon Waugh does make a very brief appearance, as promised by the excellent background article in Radio Times. This occurs in a re-enactment of the announcement of the results in the 1979 general election in which Auberon on the Dog Lovers Party ticket, ran aganst Jeremy Thorpe, Liberal Party incumbent in the North Devon constituency. The Returning Officer in this scene is naming out the candidates and their vote tallies, and after the winning Conservative candidate and Thorpe comes to: “Waugh, Auberon, Dog Lovers Party, 79 votes.” On the stage behind her, there is an actor looking superficially very much like Auberon and, in case you couldn’t guess, looking very pleased with himself. This despite the fact that he must have lost his deposit. If you missed this (as well you might have), queue the BBC iPlayer video stream to 19:20 and watch carefully. Actor Chris Carrico did a fine job with this part in the limited time available, although there is no screen credit given for this performance.

In the documentary on BBC4, the same election returns appear from actual news footage taken at the time. Here the scene is cut, however, after Thorpe’s vote is announced, and Auberon does not appear. Nor does Auberon get mentioned in the documentary itself for having possibly saved the news story of Rinka’s death from oblivion by reporting it and the connection to Jeremy Thorpe in his Private Eye Diaries. Although, to be fair, the Liberal Party politicians involved in the scandal seem to be so hopelessly incompetent that some one else would no doubt have eventually sniffed this story out even without Auberon’s help. The Radio Times background article linked above makes a good job of summarizing Auberon’s role in the scandal.

It is perhaps some consolation that Auberon is mentioned prominently in another story. This is a profile by Lucy Handley on CNBCs website of journalist and celebrity Tina Brown’s career. According to this report, Auberon may have provided her first break into Fleet Street:

Before Brown graduated [from Oxford], she had already been commissioned by editors in Fleet Street, London’s newspaper hub at the time. She had befriended Oxford alumnus Auberon Waugh (son of novelist Evelyn Waugh), and interviewed him for university magazine The Isis. Waugh, writer at satirical magazine Private Eye, would take her to lunch with his contacts, often British politicians, “people who would sort of be funny about the establishment.”… Brown landed a column in British political magazine The New Statesman and got the attention of Harry Evans, then the editor of The Sunday Times…

And the rest, as they say, is history.

UPDATE (9 June 2018): The part of Auberon Waugh in A Very English Scandal was played by Chris Carrico according to IMDB. Thanks to blogger Nige on his weblog Nigeness for pointing this out.

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Update: Thorpe Scandal Discussed in The Oldie

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Milena Borden files this report from London relating to an article by Alexander Waugh in the latest issue of The Oldie: “Rinka’s Revenge: When Auberon Waugh fought Jeremy Thorpe in the 1979 election, he honoured a family love of dogs, says his son Alexander Waugh,” The Oldie, Issue 362, June 2018, www.theoldie.co.uk:

The occasion for this article–featured on the front cover of the magazine with a photo poster of Auberon Waugh next to Dave, his Great Dane–is the BBC1 production A Very English Scandal about murder, sex, politics and pet dogs: the story of Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, who stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1979 on charges of incitement and conspiracy to murder Norman Scott who was allegedly his lover. During the dramatic events, which rotate between the House of Commons and countryside stables, at the end of the second episode shown last Sunday, Scott’s dog Rinka is shot in the head by a hired assassin.

Alexander Waugh takes us back over a century to make the connection between the Waughs (called here ‘Wuffs’) and Thorpe, tracing a family tradition “in championing the rights of dogs to live free from human harm and harassment”. The whole story reads like an essay on the unmistakable Waughs’ stamp of brilliance in satirising love, cruelty and politics.

He starts with his great-grandfather Arthur Waugh (Evelyn Waugh’s father) who bravely defended his poodle Gaspar from his own terrifying father. Then he moves on to Evelyn Waugh, who according to him, was also passionate about dogs. He illustrates this claim with two paragraphs about the well known antipathy Waugh had for his history tutor at Oxford, C.R.M.F. Cruttwell quoting the lines Waugh and his like minded student friends chanted under his window at Hertford College in the 1920s:

‘Crutwell Dog, Crutwell Dog, where have you been?’

‘I’ve been to Hertford to be with the Dean.’

Alexander Waugh writes that this was in order “to stop him allegedly sexually abusing his spaniel”. Further on, he comments anecdotally about his aunt Hatty (Evelyn Waugh’s daughter, Harriet) who was extremely fond of her dachshund.

But most of this one A4 page article is dedicated to his father Auberon Waugh’s role in the Thorpe affair as a parliamentary candidate for the Dog Lovers’ Party in Thorpe’s constituency as documented in his Private Eye Diaries (1985). Alexander Waugh concludes:  “…through my father’s actions, Rinka’s name will never be forgotten in North Devon.”

The latest twist in this terrible story, beautifully made funny by the father and the son Waugh, yesterday BBC announced that the Gwent Police is reopening the investigation into the key suspect, Andrew Newton, who claimed he was paid to kill Scott but shot Rinka instead. Newton was believed to have died but this may not be the case. The last episode of the adaptation from John Preston’s 2016 book starring Hugh Grant as Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as Scott will be shown tonight on BBC1 at 9pm. Alexander’s article been reposted  on PressReader.

Thanks to Milena for filing this report.

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Special Thorpe Trial Bonus Tonite on BBC4

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Following tonight’s broadcast on BBC1 of the final episode of the docudrama relating to the Jeremy Thorpe scandal (A Very English Scandal), BBC4 will broadcast a previously suppressed Panorama episode relating to the trial. According to the BBC’s website:

In 1979, Panorama reporter Tom Mangold led an investigation into the trial of Jeremy Thorpe and others for the alleged conspiracy to kill Thorpe’s former lover, Norman Scott. Convinced that the former LiberalParty leader would be found guilty, a special post-trial programme was prepared. This was scrapped, however, when the jury returned its verdicts of not guilty for all defendants, and the programme has remained unseen for almost 40 years.

Edited and updated with new information about a fresh 2017 police inquiry into the case, Tom Mangold finally presents his story about how powerful political forces tried to protect Thorpe. The programme features revealing interviews from 1979 with Norman Scott, chief prosecution witness Peter Bessell and the alleged hitman Andrew ‘Gino’ Newton.

Mangold on yesterday’s news explained how he was ordered to destroy the tapes of the program after Thorpe’s acquittal, which he did but only after he had tranferred them to a CD. There are also reports that the police have reopened their investigation and are looking for the hitman who shot Rinka.  Here’s a link to the program which will be available for streaming after broadcast. This special broadcast was scheduled too late to make many of the newspaper program listings.

There is, alas, no promise that Auberon Waugh was among those interviewed for the Panorama episode. This Radio Times story about the docudrama, however, suggests that if you watch carefully you may catch a glimpse of Auberon:

Auberon Waugh stands on a stage in North Devon as the 1979 general election results are read out for the Dog Lovers Party, and as Thorpe loses his seat in Parliament. This is a real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the TV drama, but there’s a great backstory. Having helped break the story about Rinka, Evelyn Waugh’s son stood for election in Thorpe’s constituency as representative of the Dog Lovers Party, printing up a manifesto: “Rinka is NOT forgotten. Rinka lives. Woof Woof, Vote Waugh, to give all dogs the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Thorpe’s legal team secured an injunction on the grounds that it might prejudice the trial. He won 79 votes anyway.

UPDATE: Reference to Radio Times story was added.

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John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)

Posted on June 2, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

John Julius Norwich died earlier this week at his home in London at the age of 88. He was the only child of Evelyn Waugh’s close friend and correspondent, Diana Cooper, and her husband Duff, with whom Waugh was not on particularly friendly terms. The obituary in The Times mentions Waugh’s character based on John Julius’s mother who appears in several of his books:

Born in 1929 with some difficulty (the “Julius” of his name denoted a caesarean delivery), he was cherished in childhood and much was expected of him — as the child of the woman who inspired Evelyn Waugh’s “Mrs Stitch” it could not have been otherwise. Lord Beaverbrook and the Aga Khan were among his godparents. It was given to few schoolboys, even in Eton Cadet Corps uniform, to assist their ambassadress mother in inspecting the General de Lattre de Tassigny’s troops.

In his novel Scoop, Waugh describes in its opening scene a visit by John (not William) Boot to Julia Stitch in which

Josephine, the eight-year old Stitch prodigy, sat at the foot of the bed construing her day’s passage of Virgil…Josephine rose from her lesson to kick John as he entered. ‘Boot,’ she said savagely, ‘Boot,’ catching him first on one knee cap and then the other. It was a joke of long standing.

Boot and Josephine later engage in a conversation where the child describes everything (including Boot’s latest book) as “banal” only to explain that it was “a new word whose correct use I have only lately learned.” John Julius claimed somewhere that he was the model for Josephine. He would have been about Josephine’s age when the book was written.

In his edition of Diana’s letters to him entitled Darling Monster, John Juluis described Waugh’s relationship with his parents:

[Waugh] had been a regular visitor at Bognor before the war and now the war was over he came back into our lives.  He had always been a little bit in love with my mother: she had always been a little afraid of him…What she feared was his manner, his prickliness and not least his intelligence, for which she felt herself to be no match.  Another complication was provided by my father, who went through periods of disliking Waugh intensely—the feeling being entirely mutual—though they made it up in the end.

In describing John Julius’s career, the Times makes clear that his parents, who had lived extravagantly, left nothing behind, and he had to earn his own living, even though he was usually assumed to be independently wealthy. After retiring from his first job with the diplomatic corps, he lived mostly by writing. His greatest success was with popular histories such as the multi-volume works on the Normans in Italy, Byzantium and Venice. His last work was in this same genre–a single volume history of France: From Gaul to DeGaulle.

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Roundup: Brideshead Über Alles

Posted on June 1, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Perhaps in connection with what was effectively the BBC’s 10th anniversary rebroadcast of the 2008 film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited earlier this week, there have been several discussions of the novel and the film on the internet:

–An Australian Roman Catholic podcast site has posted a reading of the novel. It is not clear from their site whether this will be excerpts or the whole thing. The first posting was less than half an hour so they will have to get wheels on if they plan to finish it before the end of the Southern Hemisphere winter which is about to set in. Part one is available on Catholics Read (Cradio).

–An unidentified blogger on a religious weblog called The Rad Trad, reports on a discussion with some friends recently in which they expressed their views of Brideshead Revisited. Differences of opinion arose, with the blogger taking this position:

Lady Marchmain is probably the most detestable character in the novel, more so than her eldest son, Bridey, because his aloofness and good nature are almost foibles; he has no ill intentions while his mother seems like she could sneak a dagger through a vertebra and twist it just right. Why does Lady Marchmain hold such a tight grip over her family and why does it make Bridey and Cordelia good Catholics while Julia and Sebastian apostosize, return after her death, and become saintly on their own? Why does she smother Sebastian to the point of alcoholism when all he has done is rabble-rouse a little as a student?

The blogger goes on to explain, but not necessarily defend Lady Marchmain’s position based on her family and religious history. Some fairly vigorous comments have been filed on the weblog.

–Another blogger posting on steemit as “wojtyla” (which was the surname of Pope John Paul II) offers a socio-historical interpretation to compare with the religious approach on the other weblog. In this version, it’s all because of nostalgia for the class system. This begins:

The novel Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, originally published in the bleak reality of 1945 has been adapted for the screen twice, as a TV series in 1981 and a film in 2008. The two ecranisations, with a quarter of a century between them may differ in quality, yet both can be interpreted as the manifestation of a grudging nostalgia. English aristocracy of the early XXth century is portrayed as decadent and superficially dignified, yet the luxurious interiors of 1920’s Oxford and Brideshead manor reveal the true meaning of the film. The protagonist, a young middle class painter is shown to struggle with and ultimately fail to adapt to aristocratic society…

–Literary critic Joseph Pearce has posted an essay in which he considers whether there is a new Roman Catholic literary revival in the offing. He traces the projectory of the previous Catholic literary movement, stretching from John Henry Newman’s mid-19th c. conversion to the death of Graham Greene in 1991. Greene, Evelyn Waugh and G K Chesterton were the most successful exemplars of that movement. But he fears that the latest Catholic writers (many of whom he mentions) may lack the resources of the earlier flowering:

Today, amidst the rise of an increasingly intolerant secular fundamentalism, it is not easy for Catholics to find acceptance in the wider culture. It’s possible, for instance, were Brideshead Revisited to be written today, that it would have been rejected by mainstream publishers purely because of its pro-Catholic stance.

What he might have mentioned is the consolidaton of publishing firms into 4 or 5 mega-publishers where previously there were dozens of established (or as he puts it, “mainstream”) firms such as Chapman & Hall, Duckworths and Little, Brown which published Waugh and Heinemann which published both Greene and Anthony Powell. This lack of diversity cannot be helpful to writers seeking to appeal to a more limited audience.

–Nicholas Hoare has posted a 4 1/2 minute video from a Vermont PBS program in which he promotes new readers for Waugh’s books. He singles out Brideshead as well as Jane Mulvagh’s book from a few year’s back entitled Madresfield as examples of where new readers might want to start.

–Finally the novel has been recommended on two books blogs. Posting on Odessey Sarah D’Sousa of Pennsylvania State University recommends Brideshead Revisited as one of 60 classics for a summer reading list. These are described “old books that never get old.” And novelist Helene Dunbar is interviewed on the website The Debutante Ball by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson. Dunbar’s latest novel is entitled Boomerang and is about a lost boy. Here’s part of the interview:

Who is one of your favorite (fictional or non-fictional) characters?

My favorite book of all time is Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. And my favorite character in that book is Sebastian Flyte. I learned a lot from how Waugh wrote Sebastian’s character, never giving the reader (or the main character, Charles) quite enough of him. I kept this in mind a lot when I was writing the character of Trip in Boomerang. Although he and Sebastian are very, very different, I wanted them to share that same elusive quality. So I tried not to get into Trip’s head too deeply, and also gave him a little less page time than I really wanted to.

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Alan Bell (1942-2018)

Posted on June 1, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph announces the death of Alan Scott Bell. He was former librarian (1993-2002) 0f the London Library where he oversaw major building projects and computerization. According to an earlier notice on the London Library’s website, his death occurred on 24 April 2018. As explained in that notice:

Alongside his highly successful library career, Alan actively pursued wider literary and antiquarian interests. He was a regular reviewer in the TLS and other London journals and his work for publication included a biography of Sydney Smith (1980), editing The Letters of Henry Cockburn and contributing to Histories of Oxford University and the Oxford University Press. He was appointed a Visiting Fellow at All Soul’s College, Oxford in 1980 and from 1993 worked as an advisory editor on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Following his retirement he continued his literary projects including providing editorial assistance with the Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh.

He is listed with Alexander Waugh as co-editor of of CWEW v. 30, Personal Writings 1903-1921: Precocious Waughs which was published last year. Prior to joining the Library, Alan had enjoyed:

a distinguished career in collection development that began on graduation from Selwyn College, Cambridge with his appointment as Assistant Registrar to the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, and included fifteen years as Assistant Keeper at the National Library of Scotland (1966–81) and twelve years as Librarian at the University of Oxford Rhodes House Library (1981–93).

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A Tale of Two Venues: Chagford and Beckley

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Two of Waugh’s favorite writing venues have recently been in the news. An article on the Easton Court Hotel in Chagford, South Devon, was recently posted on the website jot101.com. This begins with a description of  the facilities in wartime from a 1942 publication called Let’s Halt Awhile by Ashley Courtenay:

‘ It is a tranquil spot…personal, intimate, and so comfortable, that I would rather call it the Inn of Tranquility, for Mr Norman B. Webb and Mrs Postlethwaite Cobb have compressed into this small Tudor house all those niceties which go to make eating, sleeping, and country living pleasurable pursuits. Authors find inspiration here. Books have been written at Easton Court. Read in particular Alec Waugh’s Thirteen Such Years, which describes the hotel and the surrounding country.

In a house so genuinely old, and so remote, it might be expected that one lead a Spartan existence. Not a bit of it. There is hot and cold running water, central heating, bedside reading lamps, and luxury mattresses in every room. At Easton Court, too, they understand the art of cooking, and make full use of their vegetable and fruit garden…and dairy produce around the corner….

Waugh wrote parts of several books there starting in the early 1930s, but it is most notable for housing him during the first half of 1944 when he composed virtually all of Brideshead Revisited on the premises while on leave from the Army. The unsigned post goes on to provide these details of the 1944 visit:

‘There are plenty of eggs ‘ he reported back to Laura Waugh, ‘ (and) I have found an old man who will go to Stinkers to get me claret’. By February 1sthe had written 2,387 words of Brideshead in only 1 ½ days and hoped to complete 2,000 words a day. A week later he had written a total of 10,000 words and pronounced the quality of his work ‘very good’. By the end of the month Waugh had been summoned back to London to resume his military duties, but had returned to Easton Court by April 3rd. Progress on the novel had dipped slightly by this time, but on June 16thBrideshead Revisitedwas finished. Waugh left Devon and by early July found himself stationed in Algiers.

I don’t think he was exactly “stationed” in Algiers but stopped there on the way to his post in Yugoslavia to visit Diana and Duff Cooper, where Duff was located as Ambassador to the Free French. There were reports a few years ago that the Easton Court Hotel was to be broken up into private houses (see previous posts), but according to this website, it seems still to be operating as a country bed and breakfast.

Before moving to Chagford as his writing venue, Waugh worked in a village pub called the Abingdon Arms in Beckley near Oxford. It was there that he wrote much of his earliest work, notably Rossetti and Vile Bodies. That venue was recently threatened with conversion when the brewery owners put it up for sale. But it was bought by a consortium of villagers and their friends who are keeping it in existence as a village pub. According to a recent story in the Oxford Mail, it has become a thriving business and

…has been named the best community pub in the country. The Abingdon Arms in Beckley appears in the 2018 Sawdays pub guide and has been chosen from the almost 800 pubs featured for the special award – one of only six handed out.

As reported in an earlier post, the new owners plan to erect a plaque commemorating Waugh’s association with the premises.

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Naomi Milthorpe on Waugh

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Naomi Milthorpe, author of Evelyn Waugh’s Satire (now available as an ebook as well as hardback), will appear later this week at the University of Tasmania’s Humanities Showcase. Her topics will be archives, literary objects and Evelyn Waugh. Also on the program will be a talk on intermodernism and Nancy Mitford by Eliza Murphy. The talks will be presented on Friday, 1 June in Room 346 Humanities Building, Sandy Bay Campus, 3:30-5:00.

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Updates: Brideshead Tonite

Posted on May 28, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

The Daily Telegraph offers this rather downbeat description in its TV schedules of the 2008 Brideshead Revisited film adaptation:

In the light of the 1981 TV version of Evelyn Waugh’s novel, you do have to admire the chutzpah of anyone else giving Brideshead a go. Julian Jarrold’s attempt suffers from a desire to force modern conventions upon a story defined by the mores of upper-class interwar Britain. Hayley Atwell and Ben Whishaw are the Flyte siblings, but Catholicism, the tale’s engine, is only pernicious, never seductive.

As metioned in an earlier post, the film will run on BBC2 at 11:25 pm tonight. It will follow a new production of King Lear featuring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson (who also plays Teresa Flyte in Brideshead). The 2008 film keeps on finding hard acts to follow. It will be available on BBCiPlayer for streaming from tomorrow.

The first two episodes of A Very English Scandal managed to combine docudrama and comedy in about the right measure. Ben Wishaw who plays Sebastian in the 2008 Brideshead does better in his role of Norman Scott (Jeremy Thorpe’s former lover) in this series. This is the story of the downfall of Thorpe, who rose to be leader of Liberal Party. As noted previously, Auberon Waugh played a part in the story, making his own contribution to its comic side. The Oldie earlier this month posted an excerpt from Auberon’s autobiography summarizing his participation in the affair. Alexander Waugh has also written an essay on this subject entitled “Rinka’s Revenge” in the current issue of The Oldie. Maybe Auberon will get a mention in the final episode next Sunday on BBC1. A better title for the series, from Auberon’s perspective at least, might have been “The Dog It Was That Died.” The first two episodes are now available for internet streaming on BBCiPlayer.

The Madrid newspaper El Pais interviews Spanish entertainer Javier Garruchaga about his band’s new album ÂĄNoticia Bomba! (title taken from Spanish translation of Scoop) mentioned in an earlier posting. The El Pais story also includes a video of the interview for those who understand Spanish. There are no subtitles but the interview is transcribed in Spanish in the paper.

UPDATE (30 May 2018): References to The Oldie added.

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Five Books (more)

Posted on May 27, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Reader Dave Lull has done some additional research in the archives of the Five Books interviews and came up with a July 2012 interview with Waugh biographer Selina Hastings. See previous post. She was asked about books relating to Waugh and the Bright Young People. Here is her list of the top five, but one should really read her interview in its entirety:

  1. Children of the Sun by Martin Green
  2. Fragment of  Friendship by Dudley Carew: (This is a wonderful book. Carew’s portrait of Waugh is so marvellous because you not only see the brilliant young man but also the rather vulnerable school boy…)
  3. My Brother Evelyn and Other Profiles by Alec Waugh: (In a way I feel sorry for Alec Waugh. In his lifetime he always felt that he was the brother who succeeded. During the twenties and thirties, Alec was far better known than Evelyn. He wrote a book a year, and was very pleased with himself, adored by his parents…)
  4. The Picturesque Prison by Jeffrey Heath
  5. The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, ed. by Charlotte Mosley

These probably failed to make it into the Evelyn Waugh Archive because none has Evelyn Waugh listed as its author. Another book outside the “archive” found by Dave is Waugh’s Diaries which was included by Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash in his April 2011 list of five books about the History of the Present:

…It’s a document of its time. It’s full of hugely politically incorrect and, by the end, almost self-parodic episodes but it’s also brilliant at catching the moment that life is turned into art.

That one should have been in the Waugh Archive but may have been missed because it is listed as “ed. by Michael Davie.” Thanks again to Dave for his follow up research.

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