“That Tipsy Don”: Sir Raymond Carr (1919-2015)

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

In an obituary last week, the Daily Telegraph announced the death of Sir Raymond Carr, Professor of History and Warden of St. Antony’s College at Oxford. His special area of study was Spain, and he is said to have been to that country what his contemporaries Richard Cobb and Mack Smith were to France and Italy, respectively. He was also socially ambitious and in 1950 married, Sara, the daughter of Algernon Strickland and Lady Mary Charteris, a friend of Evelyn Waugh. This marriage prompted Waugh to comment (quoted by the Telegraph) in a 1963 letter to Ann Fleming on “that tipsy don who married Mary Strickland’s girl. Carr? Ker? Kerr?” (Letters, p. 677.) This refers to Carr’s somewhat rackety social life that was sufficiently notorious to have come to Waugh’s attention, but, according to the Telegraph, this was “only one side of a multifaceted character.”

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Times Diary Reports Waugh Advice on Letters to America

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

Patrick Kidd in today’s Times Diary reports a talk given at last week’s Waugh conference in Leicester by biographer Selina Hastings:

Waugh’s correspondence with Nancy Mitford, included advice on how he dealt with fan mail. Some (university clubs, creative-writing students, would-be tourists) would get a printed refusal, while nuns were sent a signed photograph. Autograph hunters were ignored. Wealthy Americans, though, would always get a long polite letter. “They are capable of buying 100 copies for Christmas presents,” he explained.

 

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Decline and Fall on BBC Radio 4

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a dramatization of Evelyn Waugh’s first novel Decline and Fall. The script is by Jeremy Front, who recently adapted the award-winning radio version of Sword of Honour. Among the cast are Tom Hollander (as Otto) who played the lead in the BBC TV comedy series Rev and James Fleet (as Prendergast) who is probably best known for his role of Hugo in the series Vicar of Dibley. Episode 1 is currently available on BBC iPlayer and Episode 2 will be available next week after its initial broadcast on May 3. These programs may be accessed over the internet from outside the U.K. without any special connection.

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New Approach to Waugh Appears Later This Week

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

A new biography of Evelyn Waugh will appear in the U.K. later this week. This is Evelyn! Rhapsody for an Obsessive Love, Harbour Books, Chelmsford, Essex, 14.00 pounds, 294 pp. It is written by Duncan McLaren who previously wrote a similarly idiosyncratic biography of children’s writer Enid Blyton. The Waugh book is described by the publisher as an unusual approach in which

McLaren abandons the scholarly pretense of objectivity, reacts to his discoveries, engages with Waugh’s work, retraces his steps and even re-enacts some of the key events.

The book will have a section of plates with rare and previously unpublished photos of Waugh. It also has an interesting cover inspired by the psychedelic designs of the 1970s Penguins that may be viewed here.

NOTE (added 7 May 2015): After this post appeared, the Daily Mail reviewed McLaren’s book as its lead review of the week. It is also reviewed favorably in today’s Independent.

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Complete Works of P. G. Wodehouse Completed

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

The final volume of the complete works of novelist P.G.Wodehouse has been issued. This brings to closure a 15 year project of publisher Everyman’s Library. For the first time all 99 of Wodehouse’s books are in print from a single source. This milestone was noted in the Yorkshire Post with the following quote from Evelyn Waugh, who was an admirer of Wodehouse’s work:

It was Evelyn Waugh, no literary slouch himself, who once said to [Wodehouse]: “You are the head of my profession.”

The Wodehouse project is coming to completion just as a plan to publish the complete works of Evelyn Waugh is gaining momentum. The Waugh project is intended to cover all his books as well as his other writings such as letters, many of which have not been previously published. It is expected to extend to 42 volumes to be issued by Oxford University Press over the period 2016-22. A team of expert editors is already at work. The University of Leicester is sponsoring a conference later this week where the editors, other noted writers and Waugh enthusiasts will gather and discuss their progress.

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Lancing College Announces Annual Evelyn Waugh Lecture

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

Lancing College has announced this year’s lecture, named for one of the most famous “OLs” (as its former students are called). The speaker is Charles Moore, former  editor of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, biographer of Margaret Thatcher and convert to Roman Catholicism. The lecture will be this Thursday, April 23, at the college in Sussex and may be booked here.

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Three Waughs Mentioned in Independent Article

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

In last week’s Independent on Sunday, columnist and novelist D J Taylor mentioned three Waughs in his column. He was discussing the hardships worked on the children of successful parents as they sought to find their own careers. After discussing the children of Kurt Cobain, Charles Dickens and Kingsley Amis, he reached the Waughs:

Some aspirants find the whole business of working in the family business too unnerving and go off at a tangent – Auberon Waugh, for example, who after a handful of novels gave up any attempt to emulate his father Evelyn and settled for being a highly distinguished journalist… [The experience of Cobain’s daughter] is reminiscent of the career of Vyvyan Holland (1886-1967), the younger son of Oscar Wilde, who as his friend Alec Waugh once delicately put it “detested notoriety as much as his father had delighted in it”.

 

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Waugh Recognized as Expert on Style

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

In yesterday’s Guardian, Waugh is named twice by novelist and bibliophile Joseph Connolly in his list of Top 10 books on the topic of “style.” Connolly (no apparent relation to Waugh’s friend Cyril Connolly a/k/a Everard Spruce) names Brideshead Revisited as one of his Top 10 in this category, contrasting it to another selection, Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby:

The rather more tasteful English vision: “The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder”, without whom the aspiration to class and wealth simply couldn’t be triggered. The lavish food, wine, clothes, cars and sensuous self-indulgence – the easy grace of the true aristocracy – is deeply envied by the middle-class upstart Ryder: the outsider, looking in – who yearns to emulate such consummate style.

Another of Connolly’s choices is Nancy Mitford’s 1956 essay collection Noblesse Oblige to which Waugh contributed:

Nancy Mitford is always credited as the one responsible for bringing U and Non-U language and behaviour to the attention of the terrified middle classes, but it was actually Alan SC Ross who first started probing into sociological linguistics in the magazine Encounter. Mitford further explored the theme, and Osbert Lancaster, Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman were eager to joyously and snobbishly pitch in. The middle classes strove to do better, and they are striving still.

Waugh’s contribution (“An Open Letter”)is included in Essays, Articles and Reviews, p. 494.

Further evidence of Waugh’s skills as a tastemaker appears in an article by novelist Allan Massie in today’s Daily Telegraph (“The Boat Race and Grand National show we’re creatures of tradition”).  A popular drink at the Grand National is called a Black Velvet, a mixture of stout and champagne. Waugh is quoted by Massie as describing it as a “sour and invigorating drink.” The quotation comes from Waugh’s 1942  novel Put Out More Flags (Penguin, p. 38).

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The Loved One Added to Recommended Books about L.A.

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

Last month the Guardian issued another in its series of book recommendations about U.S. cities. This one related to books about Los Angeles. Others have dealt with San Francisco and New Orleans. The original L.A. list contained no books by British writers, unless Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is included in that category. After reviewing comments by readers, the Guardian included Waugh’s The Loved One among 10 books added to the list, with this explanation:

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (1948)
Waugh’s satirical novel about the movie industry, the British expatriate community in Hollywood, the pet funeral business, and the sometimes ridiculous connections between the three was recommended by McSee, CarlRusso and JakeStockwell, who said:

Evelyn Waugh snarls at the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of the American Dream and the Brits who try to maintain the pomp of their diminished homeland. A jolly good film adaptation too (monstrous Mr Joyboy) which is nice for a story that features the movies.

They seem to have overlooked the funeral business per se in which Mr. Joyboy was employed. I’m afraid I can’t agree that Tony Richardson’s 1965 film adaptation was “jolly good;” and nor did Waugh (Letters, p. 633).

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Plashy fen and leprechaun-flavoured wine

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Jeffrey Manley

Waugh scored a twofer in last week’s Telegraph with citations relating to both nature and food writing. On March 30, Waugh’s parody of nature writing in Scoop is cited by Robert Macfarlane in an interview as an example of what that genre needs to escape:

Nature writing, he says, “still carries a hint of 18th-century cleric; of the plashy fen [as William Boot had it in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop]”.

Then last Sunday in an article (“The Sound of Food”) by Jane Shilling, the language used by Waugh in Brideshead Revisited to describe wine is compared to that of a present day quest by an Oxford academic to find sound equivalents to describe tastes:

Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, the exquisite Oxford undergraduates of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, baptised their friendship in a torrent of fine wine and adjectival excess: “It is a little, shy wine like a gazelle … Like a leprechaun. Like the last unicorn …”

The quote is somewhat misleading in that Charles and Sebastian in this scene are tasting three separate but unnamed wines from the Brideshead cellars. The shy, gazelle-like, leprechaun-flavoured variety is also compared to something “dappled, in a tapestry meadow…like a flute by still water.” The wine that reminded them of the last unicorn was also compared to a “necklace of pearls on a white neck” and “a swan.”  Brideshead Revisited (Penguin, pp. 81-82)

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