Episode 2 of Decline and Fall to Air Tonight

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Several of the papers have previewed the second episode of Decline and Fall which will be transmitted this evening on BBC One at 9pm. The most detailed advance description of this episode appears in the “Viewing Guide” column by Ed Potton in The Times:

…This week [Jack] Whitehall mostly gets to splutter awkwardly in front of Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives, who plays Margot Beste-Chetwynde (pronounced, of course, “Beast Cheating”), the wealthy widowed mother of one of his pupils. Longoria gives the role plenty of narcissistic pizzazz, although she is eclipsed by Anatole Taubman as her pretentious German architect boyfriend, who says things such as: “I love her body as much as I love concrete.” Waugh famously used the novel, his first, to give vent to his many grudges — among those getting a good satirical pasting this week are politicians, journalists, teachers (a profession for which being sent down from university for indecent behaviour is deemed the classic preparation), Germans and architects. It’s a hilariously cruel world; witness everyone’s indifference to the woes of Tangent, the boy who was shot by a master with a starting pistol in the first episode and this week must endure an even more painful ordeal. OK, it isn’t a patch on the book — how could it be? — but it’s still a splendid way to pass an hour.

More briefly, Radio Times offers this summary analysis:

…Though this (very faithful) adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s comedy of manners at times feels a bit flat and lifeless, a good cast keeps things bumping along. Eva Longoria is winning as the seemingly flighty yet ruthlessly steely Margot Beste-Chetwynde, while Jack Whitehall fits nicely into the role of hapless protagonist Paul Pennyfeather. 

Radio Times also weighs in with profiles of most of the cast, explaining their parts as well as their experience. And as an added treat tonight, the broadcast of the episode will be followed by interviews of two of the cast members on the Graham Norton Show. This will involve Jack Whitehall who plays Paul Pennyfeather and Gemma Whelan who plays Dingy Fagan. This is also on BBC One and will be transmitted at 1030pm. Both Episode 2 and the interviews will be available on the internet via BBCiPlayer shortly after transmission.

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Decline and Fall and Some Others

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Harry Mount writing in the Catholic Herald offers these additional thoughts about the BBC’s production:

The new BBC One version of Decline and Fall was pretty good – but it could only fall short of the book. The genius of Evelyn Waugh is only properly appreciated in reading him. His wit – rude, cynical, bitter, sudden, surprising, howlingly funny – is sparked off in the mind, not by the eye. The same applies to PG Wodehouse – always diminished on the telly. Transfer Waugh’s thoughts to the screen and they fall flat…

Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian confesses that he first learned from the recent BBC adaptation how to pronounce Margot Beste-Chetwynde’s name:

… to my shame, I realise I’ve been getting something wrong all these years. The surname of the pupil Peter Beste-Chetwynde and his mother Margot Beste-Chetwynde – like the non-U oik that I am, I’ve been pronouncing that to rhyme with “test get chinned”. But now I realise that it should be pronounced “beast cheating”: a sly, almost subliminal joke there, for those classy enough to know the rule. But that’s English for you: knowing how to, for example, say Magdalen College and when and where to spell it with an “e” on the end. I thought I knew about this, including of course the vital importance of airily shrugging at the absurdity of class-based rules that you have mastered. But you can always get tripped up.

And a blogger posting on Counter-Currents.com as “Margot Metroland”, one of her other names, has this to say about another Waugh novel:

In the [Alger] Hiss case, [Whittaker] Chambers’ great cheerleader and ally was Congressman Richard M. Nixon. In its aftermath, his main champion was William F. Buckley, Jr., who brought Chambers aboard the nascent NationalReview. At NR, Chambers impressed the editorial staff with his knowledge of Evelyn Waugh…The story goes that after delivering a long and convoluted monologue at an NR editorial meeting, editor Buckley looked around for support, finally asking Whittaker Chambers if he agreed. “Up to a point, Lord Copper,” replied Chambers, echoing the Daily Beast subeditor in Waugh’s Scoop.

How many other names did Margot have, I wonder? She was later for a brief period Lady Margot Maltravers (or would it have been Margot, Lady Maltravers ?) when she married Sir Humphrey Maltravers. Then she became Viscountess, or simply, Lady Metroland when Sir Humphrey acquired that title. She is usually referred to thereafter even more simply as Margot Metroland. Do we know her maiden name? She probably appears in more of Waugh’s novels than any other single character and is referred to by more names than any other character, with the possible exception of Trimmer.

Finally, for those who are becoming bored with Decline and Fall trivia, there’s a more serious approach to another Waugh novel posted on YouTube.  This is a lecture by Professor Michael Moir about the first half of Vile Bodies. He teaches, inter alia, a course in Modern British Literature at the Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia, which is apparently where the lecture was recorded.  

 

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Waugh in the Weeklies

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The New Statesman’s latest pop culture podcast, entitled SRSLY but pronounced “seriously”, includes a discussion of the BBC’s adaptation of Decline and Fall. This is SRSLY podcast #88 with commentators Caroline Crampton and Anna Leszkiewicz. The discussion of Decline and Fall begins at about 17:00 minutes on the Soundcloud version. The two podcast commentators are more positive than was Rachel Cooke who reviewed the adaptation in the magazine itself. There is also a brief radio interview of David Suchet who plays Dr Fagan in the TV film. This is available online from the archives of BBC Radio 4’s Today program.

Finally, The Spectator has published an article on the importance of preserving the short story as genre of English literature. This is by Emily Hill and begins with a consideration of Philip Hensher’s introduction to his recent two-volume collection The Penguin Book of the British Short Story (2015) where he writes:

‘The British short story is probably the richest, most varied and most historically extensive national tradition anywhere in the world,’ …[but goes on to explain that] this tradition is perilously near to dying out because there are so few publications which make a space for it anymore…Now, short stories are most often written with a view to winning writing competitions by writers who have studied creative writing used to having their work judged by a committee of their peers. The problem with relying on this method, Hensher argues, ‘as a means of developing talent, rather than the response of a paying public is that they reward what they think ought to be good, and not what contains any real energy.’

Hill, who has herself written a volume of short stories (but not for competitions), was encouraged by Hensher’s selection criteria:

I was inspired by the delicious, vicious, satirical work of Saki (my favourite is Sredni Vashtar but Hensher selected another brutal and brilliant offering, The Unrest-Cure, for his first volume) and Evelyn Waugh (most particularly his brutal little tale, Mr Loveday’s Little Outing). 

A Waugh story is included in the Penguin collection but, as noted in an earlier post,  it is “Cruise” (1933), and this story was also included in the 1936 collection entitled Mr Loveday’s Little Outing and Other Sad Stories. 

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Media Buildup Begins for Decline and Fall Episode 2

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Anticipating the broadcast of the second episode of the BBC’s adaptation of Waugh’s novel Decline and Fall, media publicity has begun to build up. The Daily Telegraph has provided a preview of that episode in its TV choice column:

The best of the laughs come early on while Pennyfeather is still in Wales attending the marriage of the dissolute Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge) to the daughter of headmaster Mr Fagin (David Suchet). There follows some slightly treadworn lampooning of the pretensions of the privileged classes as Pennyfeather negotiates 1920s high society, but happily it’s not long before he’s heading for choppy waters again, thanks to his lamb-like blindness to the source of Mrs Beste-Chetwynde’s fortune. 

The Telegraph has noted a very real problem for the BBC adaptation. Once the action in the novel moves away from Wales, there are no more easy laughs for the scriptwriters. Parts Two and Three of the novel are not only much darker, they contain much less dialogue that can easily be translated into a dramatic setting. To extract humor from the darkness and interior monologue that characterize these pages presents a real challenge, but the BBC team may be up to it if they continue the momentum developed in Episode One.

Several sources (including the BBC program guide) have reported that, following next Friday’s broadcast of Episode 2, two of the cast members (Jack Whitehall and Gemma Whelan) will appear on The Graham Norton Show, also on BBC One, at 1030 pm.

Constance Watson writing on the internet news site HeatStreet expresses hope that the success of the BBC adaptation will bring more fans to Waugh from among  younger generations. That phenomenon was certainly at play in the increase in Waugh’s popularity following the success of the 1981 Granada TV series of Brideshead Revisited:

These days, Waugh often falls foul to bores (or politically correct prudes), quick to claim that he is a racist, a snob and suchlike. … Such remarks are not altogether unfounded. The snobbery, apparent in so much of Waugh’s work, alludes to times past and worlds forgotten … The script (written by James Wood) is very true to the book in terms of dialogue. In its original form, Decline and Fall is quintessential Waugh. …  shrewd, precise and, above all, incredibly funny. The BBC adaptation is not any of these things. Instead it is light, sweet on the eye – it is beautifully shot, despite the exaggerated doom and gloom of Llanabba school in the hidden depths of Wales – and a nice and easy choice of television programme for a Friday evening.

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Hetton Abbey and Carlton Towers

Posted on April 3, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Blogger Cathy Murray posting on her weblog “Cabbages and Semolina” has discussed several country houses that have inspired literary locations. After mentioning the connection between Highclere Castle and Downton Abbey and that between Castle Howard and Brideshead Castle she notes that:

A less well known Evelyn Waugh adaptation is the 1988 film of A Handful of Dust. This film used Carlton Towers in Yorkshire as the location for Hetton Abbey. In the novel the house is a Victorian reconstruction in neo-Gothic which is the pride and joy of the main character, Tony Last.

As is the case with Castle Howard, it seems unlikely that Waugh himself had Carlton Towers specifically in mind when he described Hetton Abbey in his novel:

Between the villages of Hetton and Compton Last lies the extensive park of Hetton Abbey. This, formerly one of the notable homes of the county, was entirely rebuilt in 1864 in the Gothic style and is now devoid of interest…It contains some good portraits and furniture. The terrace commands a fine view.

Waugh commissioned a drawing of the house to appear in the frontispiece of the novel. He wrote to Tom Driberg that “I instructed the architect to design the worst possible 1860 and he has done well” (Letters, p. 88). The drawing does bear an uncanny resemblance to Carlton Towers (see link), particularly because of the clock tower (although the apparent addition to the left of the main building facing the house is inconsistent with the drawing). Carlton Towers also has a similar history to Hetton Abbey, having been a substantial 19th c. reconstruction and remodeling of a previous house on the site. But there is nothing to suggest Waugh visited there prior to writing the novel or proposed the house to the artist as a model. 

Waugh does record a visit to Carlton Towers in July 1939, several years after A Handful of Dust was published. He was accompanied by Miles Howard, son of the owner of Carlton Towers, and two others identified only as Loftus and Lewis. (Miles Howard 1915-2002 later became the 17th Duke of Norfolk and made a career in the military; awarded the Military Cross in WWII; the family were recusant Roman Catholics.) They travelled to Yorkshire on a crowded train but in a carriage hired by Howard that was occupied only by their small party. At the house, they joined a party that also included several family members as well as the nature writer Gavin Maxwell. Waugh described the house in detail in his Diaries (p. 434):

First sight of the house is staggering, concrete-faced, ivy-grown, 1870-early-Tudor bristling with gargoyles, heraldic animals carrying fully emblazoned banners, coroneted ciphers; an orgy of heraldry. Two prominent towers, water and clock, the latter in the style of a Flemish belfry, which from the younger Pugin’s original drawings were to have been mere turrets compared with a vast Norman tower which was to complete his wing, leading to church and ‘Hall of the Barons’.

There follows a comprehensive description of the interior of the house and its contents. If Waugh had seen the house before he wrote the novel and intended it as a model for Hetton Abbey, he would surely have mentioned it in this detailed diary entry.

It has also been suggested that there is some resemblance between Hetton Abbey as depicted in A Handful of Dust and Madresfield Court, which has an outwardly Gothick appearance. It has a tower, more of a steeple really, but no clock is visible in available photos. 

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Decline and Fall Discussed by Radio 4 and Sunday Papers

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row featured a discussion of the network’s TV adaptation of Waugh’s novel Decline and Fall. Presenter Stig Abell interviewed scriptwriter James Wood and literary critic Suzi Feay, who writes for the Financial Times. The discussion takes place at the beginning of the broadcast and continues until about 11:00 minutes. Among the topics covered are Wood’s use of elements of Waugh’s novel in his script (answer: he used a lot). Feay is asked to put the novel, published in 1928, into the literary context of the time and to describe how Waugh’s style is translated to the screen. Abell characterizes the book as if “written by P G Wodehouse in a very bad mood,” and both guests respond by discussing the difficulty of putting some of that mood into the script, with particular reference to the character of Chokey and Waugh’s frequent jokes about the Welsh. A point is also made about the addition to the story of the pig’s head thrown from a window at Scone College in the opening scenes. Much has been said of that particular update in light of recent stories about the Bullingdon Club and Tory politicians. But it happens so quickly in the TV version that your correspondent didn’t notice it until a second viewing, even though he was watching for it. 

The Sunday papers have printed reviews of the first episode. Euan Ferguson writing in the Observer’s review of the week’s TV is the most upbeat:

A grand surprise arrived on Friday in the shape of Decline and Fall. It shouldn’t, perhaps, have been that much of a surprise, given that the man responsible for adapting Evelyn Waugh’s first published (and most splenetically Welsh-hating, liberal-baiting) novel was James Wood, also responsible for the ever-subtle Rev., and that the casting was able to plumb such glorious heights as Stephen Graham, Douglas Hodge, David Suchet and Eva Longoria. For once, an adaptation caught Waugh’s inner voice, that singular interwar fruity whine of pomp, self-pity and high intellect, the all leavened by an utterly redemptive sense of the absurdity of the human condition, particularly Waugh’s own. Crucially, this was achieved without resort to the artifice of narrative voiceover, à la Brideshead. Wood just picked his quotes very cleverly. … 

What emerges is a true comic fantasy, yes, but also one which captures that dreadful damp twixt-war tristesse: a certain boredom with politics, a certain class obsession, an irresolute yet total anger at… something. An End of Days. This BBC production, in which all excel, is thrillingly timely, given our fractious nation’s rude recent decision to Decline, and Flail, and also gives trembling hope that, finally, we might get a faithful rendition of the wisest funny novel of the 20th century, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.

Louis Wise reviewing the week’s TV in the Sunday Times spends most of his column on the  overrated and increasingly tedious BBC police series Line of Duty but manages to spare a bit of space for Decline and Fall which he found to be 

… a jovial three-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s first published novel, dating from 1928. As a Waugh fan, I was sceptical, but I have to say the cast are doing well so far, and many of the author’s lines remain as funny on screen as on the page. I fear, though, that any TV version will make this too cosy, too cartoonish. The book is certainly a caper, but it’s rendered superior by Waugh’s dark, cruel underlying tone. If we lose that, it’s just fancy dress.

In the Times’s Saturday edition, another critic (Hugo Rifkind), was somewhat more cautious:

… If I have a complaint, it’s that the whole thing threatens, just sometimes, to get a bit wacky. Waugh isn’t wacky. He is dark and bleak and hurt, and his best humour is positively suicidal. It’s the howl of a moralist adrift among blithe savages, who cannot live with his own unavoidable conclusion that all these terrible stupid bastards are better people than him. This series may appeal to people who fondly remember Fry and Laurie’s flawless Jeeves and Wooster, and there would be no particular shame in that. I’d prefer a bit of conflicted hate too, though. That’s what Waugh is good for.

The Sunday Telegraph’s review opened with this:

It’s all but 90 years since it was published, but Evelyn Waugh’s glintingly satirical debut novel still manages to feel more contemporary and relevant than much of the BBC’s Friday night comic output. This adaptation by Rev creator James Wood does it justice, tiptoeing skillfully through Waugh’s minefield of scabrous humour…

And finally in the Daily Mail, Deborah Ross found the adaptation

…a hoot and a riot. It’s satirical without ever spelling stuff out. And it’s been updated with some sly, modern jokes. The pig’s head flying out of the window was a dig at David Cameron, right? And I laughed and laughed and laughed…

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House and Garden Reprints Excerpts from Wine in Peace and War

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

House and Garden magazine has reprinted excerpts it earlier published from Waugh’s 1947 booklet Wine in Peace and War:

2017 marks 70 years since House & Garden magazine first hit the news stands as the quarterly ‘Vogue House & Garden Book’, bound to its sister magazine with a silk ribbon. As part of a series of articles delving in to the magazine’s history we revisit our Autumn 1948 wine guide by Evelyn Waugh, who encourages copious consumption of the best vintages.

According to Waugh’s Bibliography by Robert Murray Davis, et al., the excerpts were published under the title “On Wine” in a 1954 collection entitled House and Garden Wine Book, edited by Anthony Hunt, and later in the The Pan Book of Wine (1963). The excerpts come from material printed between pp, 33-77 of the original booklet. It may be that the excerpts were also included in an issue of the magazine itself in Autumn 1948. 

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Ear Trumpet Sold at Auction

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

One of Waugh’s ear trumpets sold at auction earlier this week. The hammer price was £2,200. Thanks to Rich Oram, who is suffering non-bidder’s regret, for passing this along.

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More Reviews (Mostly Favorable) of BBC’s Decline and Fall

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The reviews of the BBC’s adaptation of Decline and Fall continue to pile up after last night’s transmission of Episode One. These are nearly all favorable. There was a split decision in the Guardian. An editorial thought the project misguided:

That BBC1 has decided to remake Evelyn Waugh’s 1928 masterpiece Decline and Fall as Friday night television is both good and bad news for viewers. The satirical novel of innocence crucified and risen is brilliantly witty. But we live increasingly in a world of social conflict that is ripe for dramatisation, yet often evades characterisation on screen. Instead we escape into a past or a fantasy imagined far in the future or just far away.

Their reviewer Sam Wollaston on the other hand thought otherwise:

There’ll be a hoo-ha about this adaptation, of course – the usual one. How can a work so dependent on the wit of the written word translate to the screen, the Waugh-mongers will cry. But this shouldn’t be seen as an alternative; it’s more a companion piece. Of course it doesn’t all go in, and will be lighter for it. But having reskimmed the novel, I’d say that Rev creator James Wood has done an excellent job. This is less adaptation and more like a damn good edit, which manages to retain verbal nimbleness as well as the novel’s essence and spirit (plus a little light racial awkwardness). And as for tossing a pig’s head into the opening scene with the Bollinger boys, well, I think that’s allowed, as well as further adding to modern political relevance. In fact, can you hear it, beyond the hoo-ha, coming from the ha-ha, where the author is buried, in Somerset? Actually, you can’t, because it’s not noise but silence – the sound of Waugh not turning in his grave.

Similar notices appeared in several news websites including iNews (Jeff Robson), The Huffington Post (Caroline Frost), and Arts Desk (Mark Sanderson). A dissenting voice was Ben Dowell in Radio Times who writes that the novel:

…is a dark read at times, bit it is also side-splittingly hilarious. Full of black humour, cruel satire and memorable caricature, the book is epic in scale but fabulous in its detail. I defy anyone to read the scene involving the Llanabba silver band and the school sports day without falling off their chair laughing. Pennyfeather’s plight is also strangely moving, as is the fate of some of the poor boys at the awful school. Waugh once said that every good novel could be written on two postcards – and if any aspiring writer needs an exercise in concision and comic timing then this is it.

So what about the TV adaptation which starts on BBC1 on Sunday? Well, it is a very expensive, beautifully-directed production stuffed with some excellent performances. But I am not sure it works…James Wood’s script unfortunately feels as flat as a pancake. It comes across as little more than a strung-together collection of Waugh’s best scenes, his lines of dialogue trotted out but never really flying (the school sports day in episode one is quite funny – how could it not be? – but nothing as hilarious as the reading of it).Waugh is so much more than his dialogue anyway. The pleasure of his masterpiece is in his narration – his descriptions, his nuances, his heavy irony, the dripping richness of his evocations, the way he hides his jokes. He’s so good, in my view, that it is probably impossible to adapt – so we can’t blame Wood entirely. But the sad fact is that it doesn’t really come together and, like Prendy, I have my doubts about whether this will attract a new fan base for Waugh. But I hope I’m wrong.

Your correspondent would have to disagree with Radio Times. The adaptation was accurate, no major characters or scenes were sacrificed, the settings were true to form, much original dialogue was saved, and the performances excellent (for the most past). It is sad that more could not have been made of the Llanabba Silver Band but at least they were present. The most brilliant performance was the brief appearance of Kevin Eldon as Mr Levy the school recruiter. He was even funnier than the novel. But close behind was David Suchet as Dr Fagan. In addition to the pitch-perfect delivery of dialogue from the novel, Suchet’s Dr Fagan responded to several of Chokey’s remarks with a simple affirmative: “He do. He do.” That was also funnier than the novel in circumstances where a direct translation into the script of Waugh’s dialogue involving Chokey could have been awkward and cringe making. The only disappointment was a minor one. Lady Circumferance (played by Ashley McGuire) didn’t sound like Lady Circumference does on the page. She looked the part and delivered dialogue as written by Waugh, but her voice was not sufficiently over the toff.

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Evelyn Waugh as a Tourist Destination

Posted on March 31, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Evelyn Waugh is mentioned in two recent articles in connection with places tourists might be likely to visit. The first is in an article in the Daily Telegraph’s travel column by Harry Mount. This relates to the centenary celebration of the British Institute in Florence where Mount was once an art student. This is not to be confused with the British Council which the Institute predates by several years. The Institute has a strong connection with Harold Acton, Waugh’s close friend from his Oxford days. Acton’s best known Florence venue is Villa la Pietra which is mentioned in the Telegraph article:

The colossal Renaissance villa, perched on the hills above Florence, owned by Sir Harold Acton. Here he entertained Evelyn Waugh and Princess Margaret. He left it to New York University.

Less well known is Acton’s ownership of a building in the center of Florence, south of the Arno. As explained by Mount, this is now:

… the Harold Acton Library, housed in the Palazzo Lanfredini, a 15th-century palace left to the Institute by the aesthete Sir Harold Acton on his death in 1994. Talk about a room with a view! I have spent some of my happiest hours in the high-ceilinged rooms of that palazzo, staring across the Arno to the Palazzo Corsini on the other side of the river. The Harold Acton Library is the biggest English language lending library on the Continent. I passed lazy afternoons reading Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, who partly based Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited on Acton, his old Oxford friend. The library is crammed with books on Italy and art history, as well as English papers and magazines. After a leisurely day of Italian lessons and Renaissance lectures, I’d drift into one of the Institute’s cocktail parties, or listen to a talk, in English or Italian, from one of its visiting speakers.

In an article appearing on an Australian travel website (Traveller.com), a literary-themed self-guided tour of Oxford is recommended. The article (written by Steve Meacham) uses the book Oxford: A Literary Guide by John Dougill to map the literary sites. After visiting pubs and other sites associated with JRR Tolkein, CS Lewis, Colin Dexter and Philip Pullman, Meacham comes to Evelyn Waugh:

Dougill’s judgment seems particularly harsh on Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Waugh was at Hertford College, and so was his narrator, Charles Ryder (though Hertford isn’t named). In the 1981 TV adaption, starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, a corner of Hertford’s North Quad was used as the setting for Ryder’s ground floor rooms – into which the foppish Sebastian Flyte vomits through an open window on their first meeting.

The article concludes with a consideration of the poets and other novelists associated with Oxford, most particularly Lewis Carroll. 

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