EW News | The Evelyn Waugh Society

The Loved One in Gay Hollywood; D&F in the Antipodes

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The Intro and “Outro” discussions of the film version of The Loved One from the recent broadcast on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel have been posted on YouTube. Appearing are Dave Karger from TCM and writer William J Mann. The film was presented on TCM as part of its Gay Hollywood series. The two speakers first note the unusually large number of homosexuals involved in the production which they describe as a “nonstop parade of fairies” and wonder rhetorically whether there was anyone involved who wasn’t gay. They then focus on the outstanding performance of John Gielgud as Sir Francis Hinsley and recall the scandal in the early 1950s when he was rumbled while cottaging in London. In the discussion following the film, they analyse the performance of Rod Steiger (one of the few participants not known to be gay) as Mr Joyboy who is portrayed as a “flaming fairy”. They do not mention that the character in the book does not come across as so flamboyantly gay.

Another Waugh adaptation is now available in New Zealand. This is the BBC’s 3-part TV series version of Decline and Fall. According to Sam Brooks writing on the NZ entertainment website The Spinoff, the best thing about the overall praiseworthy series is Eva Longoria’s portrayal of Margot Beste-Chetwynde:

She takes a while to appear (about half an hour and eight seconds into the first episode, by my incredibly scientific measure) but once she does she’s a breath of fresh air. … Longoria is the clear highlight of the series, which is mostly populated with a menagerie of British actors who you’ve definitely seen in something – probably Harry Potter – but can’t quite remember their names or who they’ve played. She plays Margot with an affable amorality (but I am sad to report no silly accent) that is intentionally jarring in this context.

Margot is at odds with the world around her, and Longoria does this with a one-foot-in-one-foot-out approach; there’s no way she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but the appearance that she doesn’t is enough to sell it. Also, the same knack she had for a one-liner in Desperate Housewives helps her here. There’s a scene where she has to audition some performers that ranks among the best of her career, and it’s where her spikiness feels liveliest against the relative softness of the other performers.

Posted in Adaptations, Decline and Fall, Film, Television Programs, The Loved One | Tagged BBC, Eva Longoria, Gay Hollywood, John Gielgud, Rod Steiger, The Spinoff, Turner Classic Movies, YouTube | Comments Off

Waugh Cited in Reports of Barcelona Incident

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Several papers have reported that the Spanish terrorist cell responsible for the recent mayhem in Barcelona intended to use their explosives to attack the Holy Family Church, another of that city’s popular tourist sites. These reports have spread across the press spectrum from the Scottish Daily Record and New York Post to the Daily Telegraph and Catholic Herald and have in more recent articles received some confirmation. Blogger Steve Sailer has noted the Daily Record’s report on the conservative website Vdare.com (best known for its anti-immigrant position) and adds a quote from Evelyn Waugh to the story by way of background:

The astonishing sand-drip castle Holy Family church has been under construction since 1882. Evelyn Waugh wrote in 1930:

“I feel it would be a graceful action on the part of someone who was a little wrong in the head to pay for its completion.”

It is said to be on track for completion in 2026, the centenary of Antoni Gaudi’s death…

Waugh seems to have been unaware of Gaudi’s work before he visited Barcelona in 1929 as a stop on his Mediterranean voyage prior to the break-up of his first marriage. His essay on Gaudi first appeared as an article in Architectural Review in June 1930 and was later incorporated into Chapter VII of his account of the voyage in Labels published later that year. He was quite impressed by the several examples of Gaudi’s works which he saw in his 2-day visit and wished he could have stayed longer and seen more. The state of the Holy Family church at the time of his visit is ironically described in the essay:

It seems to me certain that it will always remain a ruin–and a highly dangerous one unless the towers are removed before they fall down. (Labels, p. 179).

Fortunately, that has not proved to be the case.

Sailer has previously commented on Waugh’s work and may be the first to have written about the connection between The Loved One and Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard. See earlier posts.

Posted in Art, Photography & Sculpture, Articles, Labels, Newspapers, The Loved One | Tagged Barcelona, Holy Family Church, Steve Sailer, Vdare.com | Comments Off

Handful, Oxford and North End Road

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Author Gill Hornby in her Daily Mail column takes up the literary genre of expat novels. This is in response to two of her children expatriating themselves:

We Brits didn’t only build the model for expat life, we’ve also provided its cliches: Surrey lawns in improbable climates, eating Yorkshire pudding beneath a boiling sun. In A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh takes that nostalgia for home to its satirical extremes. Tony Last is a happy country gent until his wife deserts him. In a fit of self-pity, he joins an expedition to the Amazon and ends up prisoner in a steaming rain forest, forced to read aloud the works of Dickens for the rest of his life: a vision of expat hell.

Other novels recommended are Old Filth by Jane Gardam and The Expats by Chris Pavone.

A blogger (TomWinnifrith.com) has recently posted a comparison of his own Oxford career with that of Evelyn Waugh:

… I botched my entrance papers somewhat and double botched my interview when trying to get into Christ Church at Oxford (The House) and, was thus, not that surprised to be rejected some 31 years ago. But to its credit, Hertford College gave me a second chance and after an interview which I found rather confusing I was, rather to my surprise, offered a place. Clearly Professor Malpas saw something in me although, to this day, I cannot really say what. But his inspired call, has allowed me to make the same joke for thirty years about how the two greatest writers of the 20th Century were both shunned by The House and ended up at Hertford: that is to say myself and Evelyn Waugh.

Waugh’s diaries and biographies have a different explanation of his entrance experience at Oxford. When he first visited the university with his father in September 1920, he was much impressed by New College, his father’s alma mater, and Christ Church. In his diaries he noted: “Father has put my name down for New College and I am going to try for a scholarship at the House” (Diaries, p. 100). But he was advised by his teachers at Lancing to aim lower: “Lucas tells me that it is better to go up to Oxford as a scholar in a smaller college than New, from an educational point of view. Apparently, the dons make much more of you. As a commoner [i.e., without a scholarship], however, New College is far the best as you are in a really intellectual atmosphere.” (Diaries, p. 142). In the end, when he sat the scholarship examination, he listed as his first preference the more modest Hertford College, where not only was there less competition for a scholarship, but if one was awarded, it was worth more. He was offered a scholarship by Hertford and accepted without apparent hesitation (A Little Learning, pp. 137-39; Hastings, pp. 79-80). So, although he harbored a desire to attend Christ Church as well as New College, he never made the attempt.

Another blogger, George Callaghann, has posted on YouTube a video filmed in front of the Waugh family home at 145 North End Road in London NW11. In his video, he discourses for about 2 1/2 minutes on the career of Evelyn Waugh, to the accompaniment of considerable background traffic noise. Unfortunately, he begins his narrative with rather a clanger by asserting that Waugh lived in the house from the 1920s until his death in 1966. His family actually moved into the house when he was four years old (about 1907-08) and Evelyn could be said to have made his home there on and off until his father sold the house and moved to Highgate in 1933. After that, Evelyn lived mostly in hotels, his club or with friends until his second marriage in 1937 when he moved into his own house near Dursley in Gloucestershire. Aside from that, the commentary is accurate. Callaghann does not, alas, offer an inside view of the house and garden.

Posted in A Handful of Dust, A Little Learning, Academia, Diaries, Hampstead, Newspapers, Oxford | Tagged Christ Church, Daily Mail, expat novels, Gill Hornby, Hertford College, North End Road, TomWinnifrigh.com, YouTube | Comments Off

Rock Band Named “Flyte” to Issue First Album

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

A London-based rock band calling itself “Flyte” is about to issue its first album called “The Loved Ones.” Their guitarist Will Taylor has explained the band’s literary associations in an interview by Robin Murray on the website of Clash magazine:

Q: There’s a real literary influence in the lyrics.

A: I think it’s a real combination of our environment… I grew up with two English teacher parents, so lots of reading, and lots of books lying around all the time. I was a very big fan of Evelyn Waugh, and his novel Brideshead Revisited is where we took the name of the band, actually – Sebastian Flyte. That’s why we called the band that.

It was all about the mourning of a lost time, the golden nostalgic eras that are now in crumbling ruins. I think that was one of the themes of that book. Something that we definitely moved over onto the band, it’s aesthetic, and the tones of the songs. We called the album ‘The Loved Ones’ because there’s another Evelyn Waugh novel called that. And it felt like a nice way to refer to the characters on the album – there’s Annie and Alasdair, and of course ‘Cathy Come Home’. Lots of real life stories being told, lots of characters, and it felt like a good way of tying it all together.

And also, you can mention Morrissey or maybe Ray Davies or even Nick Drake, but I think they were just probably in a similar situation to us, and obviously they were inspired by those writers too, but I think it’s a lovely combination when pop or rock ‘n’ roll or recorded music… lyricism, when it clashes with other things – like art, literature, film. I think that’s always for us the most satisfying aspect of popular culture, when those things clash together. So we were trying to bottle a bit of that.

Their album will be released in the UK on vinyl later this week by Island Records. Among the tracks are songs entitled “Orphans of the Storm” and “Annie and Alasdair.” The record will also be available for sale on Amazon.com in the USA from 1 September. The band will be touring the UK in September and October (schedule posted at end of interview).

Posted in Brideshead Revisited, Events, Newspapers, The Loved One | Tagged Clash Magazine, Flyte, Island Records, music, Robin Murray, Will Taylor | Comments Off

CWEW Diaries Volume Previewed in Sunday Times

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The Sunday Times becomes the first paper to preview a volume of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. The first four of these will be published at the beginning of September, in less than two week’s time. One of those to be published is Precocious Waughs, volume 30 of the complete works and the first of several which will contain Waugh’s “personal writings”, primarily letters and diaries. These are edited by Alexander Waugh, Evelyn’s grandson, and Alan Bell. Alexander is also General Editor of the entire project, which he expects will take a decade to complete.

The Sunday Times article by Dalya Alberge, entitled “Punch-ups revisited”, notes that the childhood diaries in this first volume are appearing in print for the first time. They have been available to readers at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas for many years but were not included in earlier publications, according to Alexander Waugh, “because biographers have been more interested in his ‘impossible and rude behaviour’ as an adult.” As described in the Sunday Times, the diaries are:

… illustrated with dozens of his sketches, they reveal that one of the 20th century’s greatest writers was a witty youngster who was unafraid of a fight. His many punch-ups there are described in words and sketches that convey rough-and-tumble energy. One entry records the consequences for a boy who repeatedly mocked his name as “Wuffles”: “I informed him that, unless he refrain using my name in a corrupted form, I would have to chastise him. He, knowing that he was larger than me, continued in the name whereupon I fulfilled my promise one hundredfold.”…

Alexander Waugh has allowed himself one joke in the edition: “There’s one moment in the diary where he says, ‘Will future editor kindly omit from published version. E.A.W.’ I’ve put a footnote, ‘No. A.E.M.W.’ I couldn’t resist that . . . He had no idea he might be addressing his grandson.”

The childhood diaries referred to are for the period 1914-16 when Waugh was between the ages 10-12. This volume also includes other personal writings for the period 1903-21 and ends with Waugh’s departure from Lancing College. Other volumes to appear on September 1st in the UK include Rossetti: His Life and Works, Vile Bodies, and A Little Learning. Another volume previously announced for early release was Essays, Articles and Reviews 1922-34. The UK publication date for that volume is now reset for November. All five of these volumes have November release dates in the USA.

Posted in Academia, Complete Works, Diaries, Evelyn Waugh, Letters, Newspapers | Tagged Alexander Waugh, Personal Writings, Sunday Times | Comments Off

Waugh Events Announced

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

There will be a panel on Evelyn Waugh at the Blenheim Palace Festival of Literature, Film & Music in October. This will consist of Paula Byrne, Alex Preston and Justine Picardie who will discuss the life and loves of Evelyn Waugh that were at one time played out in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar magazine.

Preston, a novelist and writer for Harper’s Bazaar, recently researched the magazine’s archives to explore the story of Waugh, his wife, Evelyn Gardner, and her lover, John Heygate, all of whom were writing for Harper’s Bazaar. Waugh’s work was serialised in Harper’s Bazaar, notably A Flat in London, which ultimately became the classic novel, A Handful of Dust. Biographer Paula Byrne’s book, Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, looks at how the writer’s famous novel was inspired by his own experiences, loves and obsessions.

Preston is an award-winning novelist whose works include In Love and War. He writes for The Observer, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country Magazine, and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Kent. Byrne is author of a number of biographical works including The Genius of Jane Austen: Why She is a Hit in Hollywood; and Kick: The True Story of JFK’s Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth. Here they talk to Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Justine Picardie, author of four books including a memoir, If The Spirit Moves You, a biography of Coco Chanel, and Daphne: A Novel. This event is one of a series devoted to writers past and present associated with Harper’s Bazaar to mark the 150th anniversary of the magazine.

The event is sponsored by Harper’s Bazaar and is scheduled for 14 October at 2pm in the Marlborough Room of Blenheim Palace, north of Oxford. Tickets and other details are available here.

This event will take place during the display of the Evelyn Waugh exhibit at the Bodleian Library in Oxford itself. This is called “The City of Acquatint” and will run through 22 October. See earlier post for details.

The New York Public Library has selected Brideshead Revisited as its September book for its series “Discuss Great Books in a Great Space.” This will be at the main library on Fifth Avenue & 42nd St on Tu, 21 September at 2pm. Details will be posted later. Watch this site.

Posted in A Handful of Dust, Academia, Brideshead Revisited, Events, Festivals, Newspapers, Oxford | Tagged Alex Preston, Blenheim Palace Festival, Harper's Bazaar, Justine Picardie, New York Public Library, Paula Byrne | Comments Off

Brideshead Catholics and the Last Altar Boy

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

In the Roman Catholic news website cruxnow.com there is an article by Fr Dwight Longenecker about various nostalgic tendencies within the church:

… conservative Catholics long for a pre-Conciliar Church of the Latin Mass and old devotions. Liberals often dream of a return to the Church of the ’70s with its “anything goes” attitude. While such nostalgia on both sides is understandable, it is also lamentable… In England, there is a breed of Catholic, for example, called “the young fogeys” or “Brideshead Catholics,” because they wear baggy corduroys, brogues and have floppy hair. They affect a kind of Evelyn Waugh snobbery towards all things modern, and might even have a teddy bear named Aloysius.

Nostalgia manifests itself differently in other countries such as the USA but needs to be avoided for reasons explained in the article.

In The Australian newspaper (19 August 2017) there is a long article by Greg Craven, vice chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, about a government commission that has been appointed to study the charges of child abuse within the Roman Catholic church in Australia. This has encouraged various media elements to take advantage of a perceived weakness. These include:

…the hobby atheists. Then there are various “progressive” Catholics, who see the situation as an opportunity to impose their own swinging view of Catholicism. There are even deeply traditional Catholics who take a gloomy pleasure in the “end days”: a bit like Evelyn Waugh’s fantasy to be the last altar boy at the last mass of the last pope. Oddly enough, all these zealots are doomed to disappointment. The Catholic Church in Australia is deeply shaken but will not fall.

The reference is to the opening chapter of Waugh’s trilogy Sword of Honour (p. 19) where Guy Crouchback is reviewing his life in prewar Italy in which he felt cutoff from associations with other people and institutions, including the church. So, it is Guy’s fantasy and not that of Waugh himself.

Finally, in a catalogue issued by Jonkers Books of Henley-on-Thames relating to books of Muriel Spark, there is this reference:

Dame Muriel Spark was born in 1918 in Edinburgh, to Bernard Camberg, a Jewish engineer, and his Christian wife Sarah, who made their sitting room “a monument to religious eclecticism.” Spark was later to become a Roman Catholic under the sponsorship of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.

There is something missing from this description. Both Waugh and Greene certainly boosted Spark’s early career by praising her books and may have even extended financial aid at some point. But in Waugh’s case, he became acquainted with her work only after her 1954 conversion to Roman Catholicism and cannot be said to have “sponsored” her in that connection. Martin Stannard, EW:The Later Years, p. 392, citing Letters, 477.

Posted in Brideshead Revisited, Catholicism, Letters, Newspapers, Sword of Honour | Tagged cruxnow.com, Fr Dwight Longenecker, Greg Craven, Jonkers Books, Muriel Spark, The Australian | Comments Off

Half an Hour with Evelyn Waugh

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

One of our readers and a member of the EWS kindly submitted the report below of her recent Waugh-themed visit to Castle Howard in North Yorkshire.

Half an Hour with Evelyn Waugh: ‘Brideshead Scenes Revisited’ at Castle Howard

by Milena Borden

Every afternoon at 3pm one can join the outside tour guide starting at the Boar Garden of Castle Howard and follow into the steps of the Brideshead characters as depicted in the Granada TV production, 1981. The tour guide Edward Sergeant is an admirer of Waugh’s prose and a young writer himself. He took our group of six visitors on a walk around the castle in glorious weather. We walked to five locations of scenes from the film in the following order: the slope where Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) pushes Sebastian in his wheel-chair down to the green; the alley leading up to the West Wing where in episode one Charles has a conversation with the young officer Hooper (Richard Hope) and says: ‘…I’ve been here before’; the front steps of the house Lord Marchmain (Laurence Olivier) is helped to climb up on his return to die at Brideshead; the roofed terrace where Charles and Sebastian (Anthony Andrews) sunbathe naked; finally we stopped at the fountain where Charles and Julia (Diana Quick) dramatically part in moonlight. The tour was intercepted by several very short, sensitively selected and nicely read by our guide excerpts from the Penguin Classics paperback publication of the novel.

‘Did Evelyn Waugh indicate Castle Howard as the actual place of his fictional book?’, asked one of the ladies in our group. The answer was: ‘No, he didn’t’.

Posted in Adaptations, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh Society, Film | Tagged Castle Howard, Milena Borden | Comments Off

Penguin Classic Brideshead Gets New Cover

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Penguin UK has reissued the Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited with a new cover. This is part of a redesign of this line of books adopted earlier this year:

In 2017, the [Penguin Modern Classics] series takes its most recent step forward. Jim Stoddart has given his own 2007 design a new livery: the back covers, spines, Penguin roundel and cover text have all turned a pale blue-green, a shade known as ‘eau-de-nil’, ‘water of the Nile’. This colour is a reference to the series’ original palette and its brief blue-green incarnation as Twentieth-Century Classics.

The colour ‘eau-de-nil’ emerged in the late 19th century, associated with fashionable décor, clothing and ladies’ toilettes. Over the last hundred years it has become more peppermint, and is widely used by ‘classic’ brands including Fortnum and Mason, Laura Ashley and Hunter wellingtons. It resembles ‘Cambridge blue’. This new combination of bold images and avant-garde font with a classic colour sums up the enduring yet radical spirit of the Modern Classics. To launch the new look, fifty titles have been selected to represent of the breadth and depth of the list. These are the first books to be given eau-de-nil covers, and more will follow over the coming months.

Brideshead was one of the first titles to appear in the makeover.

Posted in Art, Photography & Sculpture, Bibliophilia, Brideshead Revisited | Tagged Penguin Books UK | Comments Off

Virginia’s Little Problem

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

An article on the anti-abortion website LifeSite News considers descriptions of abortions in literature and notes, not surprisingly, that most of them are rather down beat. This is written by Jonathan Van Maren and is entitled “There are no happy songs or literary works about the tragedy of abortion”. The first literary example cited is from Evelyn Waugh’s Unconditional Surrender:

When abortion does crop up in literature, it is often presented as the hurried solution to a problematic pregnancy in sheer panic. Evelyn Waugh, a conservative Catholic, presented one such situation with his trademark dry detachment in his World War II novel Unconditional Surrender, when his character Virginia Troy discovers that her rather wanton lifestyle has resulted in a child. “Dr. Puttock, you must do something about this,” she informs her physician. Dr. Puttock, understanding her, replies icily, “I don’t think I understand you.” Fortunately for the child, the address Puttock eventually gives her of a doctor who might be willing to perform such a surgery for a steep price turns out to have been leveled by German bombs, and Virginia ends up marrying instead.

Unfortunately, to prove his point Van Maren has been forced to edit out of the story Waugh’s humour even in dealing with such a somber subject. After finding the first abortionist’s office in Brook St, Mayfair, bombed (as described in the article), Virginia acquires the address of another from Kerstie Kilbannock’s charwoman. This turns out to be a Dr Akonanga, an African immigrant who lives at 14 Blight St, W1, just off the Edgeware Rd. When she finds his address in these less salubrious surroundings, it turns out he has temporarily discontinued his practice and has moved quarters to Brook Street, a few doors down from the first address she tried. Returning to that street, she finds a large house occupied by the military. She is directed to Dr Akonanga’s room and

…was greeted by a small, smiling, nattily dressed negro, not in his first youth; there was grey in his sparse little tangle of beard; he was wrinkled and simian and what would have been the whites of his eyes were the colour of … nicotine-stained fingers; from behind him came a faint air blended of spices and putrefaction. His smile revealed many gold capped teeth.

He mistakes her for the bearer of a shipment of scorpions he had ordered from Africa. This scheme went awry as explained a few pages later (p. 139). Virginia informs him in a roundabout way that she is seeking an abortion. He then explains:

“All that has changed. I am now in government service. General Whale would not like it if I resumed my private practice. Democracy is at stake…I am giving Herr von Ribbentrop the most terrible dreams.”

Thus ends Virginia’s search for an abortionist. After returning to the Kilbannock’s flat, she fell asleep:

She dreamed she was extended on a table, pinioned, headless and covered with blood-streaked feathers, while a voice within her, from the womb itself, kept singing “You, you, you.'”

The voice is Trimmer’s (the father of the unborn child) singing the Cole Porter song “Night and Day” (Unconditional Surrender, Book 2, Chapter iv, pp. 100-04).

The LifeSite article also oversimplifies how Virginia works out her problem. She remarries Guy Crouchback (who knows she is pregnant with another’s child), has the child who Guy claims as his own, and dies in an air raid while the child is being cared for in the country. Guy returns to marry the girl who had been taking care of the child. So, while the humour surrounding the abortion may be a little dark, Waugh, as usual, finds something to laugh about.

Other writers whose works are considered include Hemingway, Hardy, Eliot and Anne Sexton.

Posted in Newspapers, Unconditional Surrender/The End of the Battle, World War II | Tagged abortions, Jonathan Van Maren, LifeSite News | Comments Off