Weekend Roundup: From Sword of Honour to Women of Knossos

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

In a recent issue of The Australian, Greg Sheridan writes about how his countrymen should deal with the shame of the recent cricket cheating scandal. This is entitled “National brand needs tending, not tears.” As an example of how the national image image should be managed, he looks at that projected over the years by Australian soldiers, known locally as “Diggers,” and cites a passage from Evelyn Waugh:

In Evelyn Waugh’s classic Sword of Honour trilogy he deals with the chaotic Allied retreat from Crete during World War II. Waugh was never one to give undue praise to colonials. But consider this scene: “While Guy stood there beside Tommy’s bunk a huge, bloody, grimy, ghastly Australian sergeant appeared in the door. He grinned like a figure of death and said: ‘Thank God we’ve got a navy,’ and then sank slowly to the deck and on the instant passed into the coma of death.” (Officers and Gentlenen, Penguin, p. 167)

Waugh was one of the greatest novelists and naturally he doesn’t explicate the meaning of the Australian sergeant. But in that single image is a whole narrative of strength and will, beyond even the point where death should have intervened.

This scene quoted in the article occurs in Waugh’s novel as the Commandos are arriving in Crete to find the landing area in a shambles as the retreating and defeated Allied forces are scrambling on board Guy’s ship even before the arriving troops have disembarked. Sheridan contrasts the attitude of the Digger sergeant in Waugh’s novel with the weeping cricket players who were caught cheating and thinks that they might learn something from the Digger about future behavior. He concludes: “I respect the cricketers’ emotions–but all that weeping. You’d think they had lost a family member, not been suspended from cricket…We have a lot to live up to in this field, and a lot at stake. Lest we forget.”

An interview in the German press also mentions Sword of Honour. A publisher (Petra Kehl) specializing in young adult books is asked for examples of Christian books for this age group and answers:

Unfortunately, I find time and again that parents understand a religious book always to be about a saint or something similarly pious. I recently gave a lecture entitled, “It does not always have to be saints – why children need ordinary Catholic heroes,” in order to dissuade their parents. It is important that the author writes out of a Christian attitude. The heroes may well have weaknesses. A good example … is “Without Fear and Reproach” [translation of the German title of Sword of Honour] by Evelyn Waugh, in which  the protagonist is not “pious” in the strict sense, but he quite naturally lives the rituals of his faith, which have passed over into his flesh and blood, even though he encounters incomprehension in his Protestant environment. [doch er lebt ganz selbstverständlich die Rituale des Glaubens, auch wenn er damit in seiner protestantischen Umgebung auf Unverständnis stößt, sie sind ihm in Fleisch und Blut übergegangen.] [?]

Sword of Honour was published in German under the title Ohne Furcht und Tadel which refers to a standard that was expected to be observed by Medieval knights. The source of the interview is unclear. It shows up in a Google search as having appeared in the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung but it is posted on the website kath.net.

The National Review publishes a review of Alan Hollimghurst’s new novel The Sparsholt Affair. This is by Randy Boyagoda and is entitled “Brideshead is not Revisited”. The article opens with this:

For readers who can imagine English life thanks to college reading lists featuring books by Evelyn Waugh, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and the like, Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel will be both deeply familiar and undoubtedly strange. The Sparsholt Affair begins in the plummy voice of Freddie Green, a literary man remembering his days at Oxford during the Second World War.

Although Hollinghurst’s story begins, like Waugh’s, at Oxford, after that it goes in different directions. The reviewer is somewhat disturbed by Hollinghurst’s “…decision to create expectations of important, even crowning revelations — about important events and the characters’ involvements in them — without ever entirely fulfilling them.”

Boris Izaguirre, novelist, screenwriter, TV personality and gay is interviewed in the Spanish language El Huffpost by Bettina Dubcovsky. Boris was born in Venezuela in 1965 but has been living in Spain and the USA since the Chavez regime. He has written 8 novels since 1991 as well as several essay collections, but the beginning of the interview relates mostly to his TV series and his own TV appearances. His best known novel seems to be Villa Diamante which won an award and has been translated into French. When the interview turns to his books, it results in this exchange:

Boris Izaguirre is as we see him: histrionic (although now somewhat less), mannered, intense, funny, maybe a bit of a fragile character, but I’m sorry, it’s wrong, … he knew how to merge frivolity with culture and intellect. Rara avis. He attributes that achievement to his favorite books, such as Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. “It’s the story of a castle and the Flyte family that fascinates the protagonist Charles Ryder, an observer who sees everything from the outside, I think I live my life that way,” he says. The truth is that Boris speaks a lot (with a superb transparency), but he observes and hears a lot more.

The discussion then turns to Boris’ latest book, which sounds autobiographical:

Tiempo de Tormentas is the story of the relationship of a mother who is a professional dancer and is called Belén with her son Boris, who is gay for 49 years. … Above all it speaks of that maternal filial bond that crosses many stages: that of discovery, of protection and separation. “It’s like a roller coaster!” Says the author, “I always thought it was a good idea to share this connection, which was very intense, always very positive but with its conflicts and difficult times, which has a country in the background. Once more… being an outside observer (like Charles Ryder) was the best way to see what happened in Venezuela.

The remainder of the interview is mostly biographical.

Finally, back to Crete where we started, the Weekly Standard carries a review of two new translations of Homer’s The Odyssey, both by academics: Emily Wilson and Peter Green. Wilson’s gets a lot of attention from reviewer Susan Kristol because it is the first English translation of this work by a woman. That discussion even extends to the dustwrapper, where Waugh makes a contribution:

The attractive dust jacket of Wilson’s hardcover suits the feminist marketing scheme. The cover features a well-known, heavily restored Minoan fresco of three women who look ready for a party. (Evelyn Waugh memorably commented about this and other frescoes from Knossos: “It is impossible to disregard the suspicion that their painters have tempered their zeal for accurate reconstruction with a somewhat inappropriate predilection for covers of Vogue.”)

Waugh’s description appears in his early travel book Labels. See earlier posts. The translations from German and Spanish are by Google with edits. Any comments on the translated passages (especially those highlighted) may be made as provided below.

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Review: Waugh at War

Posted on April 5, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Milena Borden has reviewed the play Happy Warriors that opened last week in a North London theatre:

James Macdonald’s new play staged in the Upstairs at The Gatehouse theatre is inspired by the Evelyn Waugh and Randolph Churchill’s Second World War mission to Yugoslavia in the autumn of 1944. The venue is the charming 16thcentury Highgate village pub just under two and a half miles away from Waugh’s family home on 145 North End Road.

The scene is the farmhouse in Topusko where their stormy friendship escalates to a comical antagonism fueled by the angry local cook, Zora Panic. The script follows closely the well-documented wartime episode, with the name of Fitzroy Maclean who was the head of the mission dropped more then once during the two acts.  Details such as Waugh’s “camel-hair dressing gown”, the £50 Bible reading bet and the box of Havana cigars sent from London seem to have been borrowed from the Earl of Birkenhead’s memoir “Fiery Articles” in “Evelyn Waugh and His World” (1973: 137). The pattern of the play is a circle of a dialogue with the two main heroes going back to where they started, unable to escape the hilarious agony of cohabiting in territory controlled by Tito’s partisans in Croatia.

Simon Pontin as Randolph and Martha Dancy as Zora managed to provoke laughter in the audience of around 30 people and a smile of approval from the playwright who attended the Preview night. The mantle of being Waugh falls upon the shoulders of Neil Chinneck, a young London actor, who attempts to blend wit and satire into the character by threatening to kill Randolph and himself. He achieves a decent presentation of Waugh at war, although it is somewhat dry in expression and wiry in appearance.

The German bombardment effects work well together with the décor of the bare village room and Winston Churchill’s portrait on the wall. The choice of Vera Lynn’s songs as a musical background adds to the vitality of the performance. But it is the total lack of pretense that seems to be the main merit of the play.

The play continues through 22 April. See earlier post for details.

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Faringdon Auction Includes Waugh Portrait

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Christie’s has announced a sale later this month that will include several items from the interior of Faringdon House, the former residence of Waugh’s friend Lord Berners. Among the items are a number of paintings and drawings by Lord Berners himself. These include portraits of Diana Cooper, Diana Guinness (later Mosley) and Daphne Weymouth (later Fielding), all close friends of Waugh, as well as four portraits of Robert Heber-Percy, who was not so close, and some landscapes. This sale is probably related to the efforts of Sofka Zinovieff to sell the property about which she recently wrote a book: The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me. The property was left by Lord Berners to Robert Heber-Percy who in turn left it to Zinovieff, his grand daughter. See previous post.

There is also a drawing said to be of Evelyn Waugh as a child. This is attributed to “English School”. Here is Christie’s description of that item:

Portrait of Evelyn Waugh as a child, wearing a pale blue coat
inscribed ‘Unfinished Rendering of/Evelyn Waugh at a/youthful age/T.C./ T. Chesell (upper left and right corners); inscribed on the reverse; pencil, watercolour, bodycolour and chalk on card.

This is Lot 19 and a copy of both the front and reverse sides of the portrait are provided. The handwritten message dated 1967 on the reverse side of the portrait attributes it to Frederick Etchells (1886-1973), a fairly well-known artist-architect who contributed to the Omega Group, was a member of the Vorticist movement, designed several well-known buildings and has works in Tate Gallery collections. It also asserts that the “inscription” (meaning that on the front) is in Etchell’s handwriting. “T. Chesell” could perhaps be a code for Etchells. Apparently, Christie’s chose not to accept this reverse-side attribution. It is not obvious, however, why the inscription on the front (including the identification of the subject of the portrait) is entitled to any greater credibility than that on the reverse (where the portrait’s subject is not discussed). The portrait does not resemble any photos of Waugh as a child (or adult for that matter). This item is listed between two other items, both of which have stated associations with Lord Berners, but whether this one has such an association is not indicated. Berners died in 1950, well before the date of the reverse side message. But this item might have been acquired by Robert Heber-Percy, who died in 1987. Might he have been the author of the reverse-side attribution? Estimated price is £600-1000.

We have today (13 August 2018) received a comment from the buyer of the portrait described above. This is Peter Ellis, bookseller, who has researched several of the points noted above relating to the attribution and subject matter of the portrait. He has kindly drafted these in the form of a comment which we have posted separately at this link.

UPDATE (5 April 2018): Christie’s has announced a late opening next Monday (9 April) that will focus on the consignments from Faringdon House discussed above. This will feature:

A talk from Dr Sofka Zinovieff, Robert Heber-Percy’s granddaughter, will explore this fascinating tale further, with musical interludes inspired by the period sung by Opera Prelude. Alongside this, artist Luke Edward Hall and creative consultancy Campbell-Rey will together be designing a room using furniture from the sale.

Christie’s London showrooms are located at 8 King St, St James’s, London SW1. The late opening will extend from 6-830pm. Details available here.

UPDATE 2 (6 April 2018): A story about the Faringdon auction also has appeared in the Daily Telegraph, complete with color photographs. This is by Henerietta Thompson datelined today in the Luxury/Design section. After mentioning the house’s history and Zinovieff’s book, the article offers this summary of the contents that are on offer:

The Interiors Sale at Christie’s stands out not only for its accessibility – with some lots starting as low as £300 it attracts a younger collector because of the nature of the material – but also for the stories behind the objects presented. Many of the objects that make up the sale are rare and of exceptional value, but – and especially in this case – the sense of fun and the surrounding narrative are what makes them more appealing still. It is the enormous sense of hospitality and fun that imbues the Faringdon estate that Christie’s most wants to celebrate in this season’s sale, says Cecilia Harvey, Interiors Specialist at the auction house.

UPDATE 3 (14 April 2018): According to Christie’s auction report, Lot 19 (the Portrait of Evelyn Waugh) sold for £1,250.

UPDATE 4 (13 August 2018): As noted in the text, we have posted a comment from the buyer of the Waugh portrait mentioned above. It is available at this link.

 

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“Happy Warriors” Reviewed

Posted on April 3, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

The play now running at the Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate involving Evelyn Waugh and Randolph Churchill in WWII Yugoslavia has been reviewed in London Theatre 1. The review is by Loretta Monaco and is, on the whole, favorable. After describing the plot (see previous posts) the reviewer discusses the production. She finds the staging well done but has some reservations as to the script:

If a theatre-goer were to be influenced by the writing, it would appear that playwright Macdonald wishes only to perpetuate the idea that Randolph Churchill was a bounder and a cad. If this was the purpose, then Macdonald has failed. Simon Pontin presents us with quite a sympathetic Randolph, one who has been cursed at birth, since all his gifts will be overshadowed by his father’s success. If he is a womaniser, known for his good looks and charm, so be it. It is a talent in which he excels, one with no connection to daddy. As for his insufferable arrogance, it may have much to do with an identification with his paternal grandfather, Lord Randolph Churchill. All is forgiven in Happy Warriors, and Randolph’s character revisited when he intervenes to thwart an attempted suicide but to say more will reveal too much of the plot.

Finally, the character of Evelyn Waugh is thinly drawn, even though he was the more fascinating of the two men. Up to the present day, Waugh is celebrated not only as a great novelist, but also for his courage during the Second World War, attributes which are ignored in the play. His character is little more than a waspish male with petty complaints, an extremely limited portrayal of his achievements. But there is always a choice in drama as to where to place the weight and, in Happy Warriors, it is placed firmly on the side of Randolph – perhaps more for his father than for himself.

The review concludes that the play is “well worth seeing.” Performances continue through 22 April.

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“Mr Waugh’s Cities” Posted on Internet

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

A link to Prof Frank Kermode’s essay from Encounter magazine for November 1960 has been posted on the internet. This is entitled “Mr Waugh’s Cities” and is about Waugh’s views on religion as reflected in his fiction up to The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. The essay is also a review of the revised edition of Brideshead Revisited which was published by Chapman and Hall earlier that year. The revised edition only appeared in the USA a few years ago.

Waugh was unhappy with the essay and wrote a letter about it to Encounter which was published in the next issue. This was accompanied by a brief response from Prof Kermode saying that he had not intended to distress Mr Waugh by what he had written and apologizing for having done do. Here’s a separate link to that correspondence. The essay and an excerpt from Waugh’s response were reprinted in Martin Stannard’s Critical Heritage volume on Waugh (p. 279).

There is no explanation for a link to this particular article having been posted, which seems odd since the Unz Review has made the entire archive of Encounter magazine available on the internet for free access by anyone. According to Google, the link was posted on Easter Sunday which may be a clue.

Frank Kermode (1919-2010) was Professor of English Literature at UCL, Cambridge and Columbia, and this essay was his first of several writings about Waugh. Perhaps most notable among these others is his introduction to the Everyman edition of the Sword of Honour trilogy.

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Travelers’ Waugh

Posted on April 1, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Evelyn Waugh was well known as a travel writer and two foreign newspapers have cited his work in their recent travel columns. In the Kenyan newspaper, Daily Nation, columnist John Fox pulled out an old, unread copy of Waugh’s last travel book A Tourist in Africa for his latest article. His column specializes in stories about days out around Nairobi:

A Tourist in Africa was written in 1960, only a few years before I also first came to Africa. It is a crafted diary of two months travelling around Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). Reading it properly, I have found it delightfully provocative and, often, insightful about the challenges East and Central Africa were facing at that time….

This is what Waugh picked up on the voyage about Nairobi: “I was told Nairobi is now unfriendly, huge and infested by thieves; the carefree life of the Muthaiga Club is a memory; rather a scandalous one.” Waugh must have given his ear to some Kenyan cowboys. Once landed in Mombasa, he noted the “apartheid” that had grown up between the pre-independence administrators and the settlers. He makes this amusing comment: “There was then simply a division between two groups of Englishmen, one trying to run the country as a Montessori School, the other as a league of feudal estates.” The bon viveur Waugh would … have appreciated the many high class restaurants and hotels that are now to be found in the city he failed to visit.

Waugh had a 5-day stop in Mombasa on his cruise down the coast and spent it mostly around that city, where he found that the “old tradition of open hospitality flourished as it used to up country.” He also made a 2-day side trip to Kibo on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro where he joined some other passengers from the cruise (pp. 43-59). As noted in the article, he avoided Nairobi itself.

The German newspaper Die Welt in its travel section prints an excerpt from a German book about the author’s recent trips to England. The book is entitled Lesereise England (Reader’s Guide: England) and is written by Stefanie Bisping. The excerpt deals with her visits to Yorkshire where she stopped at several country houses, among them Castle Howard. It was there that she encountered Evelyn Waugh:

Evelyn Waugh, a satirist, novelist and admirer of the English manor… passed Castle Howard in 1937 on his way to Ampleforth Abbey, then the seat of a Benedictine abbey and boarding school. … [A]lthough numerous mansions came under the hammer between the world wars and many cultural treasures of the interiors were sold overseas, the phenomenon of the manor was still little known as a tourist attraction.

Even Waugh’s immortal novel “Brideshead Revisited” about the decline of the feudal world of the nobility was still a dream of the future. And yet he imagined Castle Howard in the winter of 1944, tormented by bad food, constant danger, and memories of better times, writing the book on the glamorous prewar world of the nobility. For Castle Howard, built in 1699 by Charles Howard, the third Earl of Carlisle, is not just – like Brideshead – the only dome-crowned Baroque palace in England. Like Waugh’s fictional nobility, the Howard was once a castle that was demolished to be rebuilt as a castle elsewhere on land where a village had previously been planed. Finally, Castle Howard owns its own chapel. However, this is not a Catholic as in Brideshead, but a rock solid Anglican, and one with beautiful windows that show stations of the life of Christ. It was designed by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones and made in the workshop of his colleague William Morris.

She goes on to explain that although the building at Castle Howard resembles Waugh’s description of Brideshead Castle, the family he describes was more like the Lygons living at Madresfeld Court in Worcestershire. She also writes that the staff and literature explaining Castle Howard to visitors do a good job of deccribing the nature of Waugh’s limited personal connection with the place. Translation is by Google with minor edits.

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Roundup: A Legacy, a Plaque, 2 Lists and a Mystery

Posted on March 31, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

British Heritage Travel Magazine has published a profile of Alexander Waugh entitled “A Legacy Revisited”. This is by Stephen G and is datelined 29 March 2018. It opens with a brief summary of the ongoing difficulties of securing and restoring the Waugh family graves in Combe Florey and continues:

He’s already spearheading the Collected [sic] Works of Evelyn Waugh, with an amazing 43 volumes planned for the series. Yet he’d still like to safeguard the man’s grave, as he does his legacy. The biographer of both the Wittgenstein family (The House of Wittgenstein) and his own (Fathers and Sons), Alexander acts as general editor for the project—just one of his interests. … When we visited his home, before any of the books in the series were published, he took us through the archive room, overflowing with Evelyn’s papers: “As you can see, thousands and thousands of documents.” He leafed though press clippings–“That’s war correspondence from his time in Abyssinia”–and plucked out a few letters at random. “Ah, Nancy Mitford!” he said, noticing a special missive, and shared his worries about the possibility of water damage: “Does it feel damp in here to you?” He is considering electronic archiving, just to be safe. “This is a massive work of biography, essentially,” according to Alexander. “The letters in order, with the diaries in order, with news stories all collated. Incoming, outgoing. It’s fact, fact, fact. Primary source material of Evelyn Waugh, and, to me, that is the greatest biography you can ever get.”

An article in the current Canonbury Society Newsletter: Conserving Canonbury (Spring 18, p. 5) also focuses on an Evelyn Waugh conservation project. This is a plan to erect a commemorative plaque at his former residence in the first-floor (i.e., second-story) flat at 17a Canonbury Square in Islington. In the article (“Evelyn Waugh: Invisible Tenant of 17A”), David Ireland, noting the plaque for George Orwell’s brief residence at 27b,  makes a strong case for the Waugh plaque:

Waugh, with new wife Evelyn Gardner (the ‘She-Evelyn’), took on the unfurnished first-floor flat for £1 a week in August 1928. The flat had five rooms, with a communal laundry in the basement (of which She-Evelyn remained unaware throughout her stay). There is a generous dollop of hyperbole from Waugh himself – ‘half a house in a slum’, ‘our dilapidated Regency Square’ – but all biographers agree that Canonbury in 1928 was neither up nor even coming with Canonbury Square being considered a cheap place to rent in the ‘unfashionable district of Islington’. Waugh’s brother, Alec, thought ‘the houses were solid, well built, in the Georgian style. You would imagine yourself in Bloomsbury. For fifty years it had been occupied by humble families.’

Humble, or perhaps not, Waugh was keen to entertain and many famous literary figures visited. The highpoint was the housewarming cocktail party at the end of November 1928; invitations included routes from Buckingham Palace to 17a Canonbury Square. It was at this party that Alec met Diana Mitford. Waugh’s diaries record that ‘Tony Powell came to see us full of scandal about the Sitwells’. A 17a lunch could be an elastic affair: ‘Harold Acton came to luncheon … he stayed until about 5, talking with his usual luminousness but with every sign of a slightly deranged mind’. Cyril Connolly recalled that his lunch at 17a ‘lasted all day’.

The article goes on to recount the success of Waugh’s early writings published and written during his brief residence and the breakup of his marriage. It concludes:

The publicity surrounding the Heygate affair put an end to Nancy Mitford’s month-long stay as a lodger at 17a. She had hoped to have ‘great fun’ there but ‘fearing scandal’ (writes Martin Stannard), left in a hurry. Surely a case for another green plaque in Canonbury Square? Thanks to Waugh biographers over the years (including, latterly, Duncan McLaren).

The Orwell green plaque on 27b was erected by the Borough of Islington. There are 99 of these green plaques scattered around the borough, the most recent of which, according to information on the internet, was erected at the Finsbury Park Empire music hall in October 2017. These are officially denominated “People’s Plaques” and convincing a socialist council to erect one for Evelyn Waugh could be a hard sell.

Entertainment Weekly has published a list compiled by David Canfield and Seija Rankin of what it considers the 25 best (or most entertaining) Hollywood novels, and Waugh’s The Loved One appears in the list:

A little Six Feet Under here, some Golden Age romanticizing there, and you’ve got Evelyn Waugh’s crackling The Loved One. A poet and pet mortician becomes enraptured by the golden gates and paradise aesthetic of Whispering Glades Memorial Park, located in the heart of Los Angeles, where he falls into a bizarre love triangle.

Also included on the list is the less frequemtly mentioned novel Laughing Gas by P G Wodehouse.

Another Waugh novel appears in a compilation of the best war novels of all time on shortlist.com:

Men at Arms is the first novel in Evelyn Waugh’s lauded Sword of Honour trilogy. It examines the lot of Guy Crouchback, a 35-year-old divorced Catholic who, as World War II commences, is clearly unhappy with his lot in life. War, he believes, can give meaning to his life once more. What transpires is a glimpse into the foolhardy consequences of leaving idiots, fools and the graduates of England’s public schools in charge. The noted critic Cyril Connolly proclaimed Waugh’s series to be the ‘finest novels to have come out of the war’.

Finally, a book with an apparent Waugh connection that has received little attention has appeared in a Google search. This is a Spanish language paperback entitled Kamasutra Gay (or Gay Kamasutra) by Sebastian Flyte published in two editions by Libro Latino and by Ediciones LEA. According to its description on Amazon.com (translated from Spanish):

The gay Kamasutra is an ancient work of which fragments are preserved and the true origin is unknown. Some of its historical references allow one to suppose an antiquity of, at least, 3,000 years. It is possible that the book circulated secretly between citizens and slaves of archaic and classical Greece. The gay Kamasutra was subversive and pernicious not only because it fostered all kinds of physical relationships between men, but because, moreover, it equaled all human beings between the sheets. Citizens and slaves, whites and blacks could enjoy each other and enjoy the exchange of roles and positions….

Another site (betterworldbooks.com) listed a co-author as Sebastian Aguilar. I did check, and can tell you that Aguilar is not Spanish for flight or flyer. You are unlikely to find copies in your local family bookstore or public library. It is, however, available in both editions from Amazon.com (reader discretion advised).

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Waugh Watering Holes in the News

Posted on March 30, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Two pubs associated with Evelyn Waugh’s life in the 1920-30s have recently been in the news: the Abingdon Arms in Beckley, Oxon., and the Fair View Inn in Llanddulas, North Wales. In  one case the news is good, in the other not so good.

To take up the bad news first, Russell Kane, comedian and Waugh enthusiast, has retweeted a post from a citizens group in Llanddulas, North Wales seeking support for an effort to prevent the destruction of the Fair View Inn. Reports of the planning approval for the conversion of the property to a block of flats appeared last month in the Daily Post, a North Wales newspaper:

Angry villagers have vowed to fight on after plans for a controversial housing development were given the go-ahead. Residents in Llanddulas had raised objections to Cartefi Conwy’s application to build 24 one and two bedroom apartments and a four-bedroom house on the site of the Fair View Inn in the centre of the village. Objections were raised on the grounds of the loss of the pub as a community facility, the loss of privacy for nearby residents, an insufficient amount of parking at the site, and a lack of outdoor space for residents at the development. Councillors at Conwy’s planning committee voted by four votes to three to grant permission for the development.

The opponents of the development have now organized and are seeking funds to support a lawsuit to overturn the council’s decision. Their petition on the crowdfunding site JustGiving.com describes, inter alia, Waugh’s association with the pub during his tenure as schoolmaster at the nearby Arnold House school:

This site has a historical significance, as the Fair View Inn was the drinking place of the renowned author Evelyn Waugh, when he was a teacher in Llanddulas. He often sought solace here – and it is known as “Mrs Roberts’ pub” in both his diaries and in his novel, ‘Decline and Fall.’ Fans of Mr Waugh often seek out this public house for this very reason.

Photos of the Fair View Inn and a drawing of the proposed apartment block accompany both articles.

Meanwhile, the news from Oxfordshire is better. The citizens of the village of Beckley prevented their local, the Abindgon Arms, from suffering a fate that might have been similar to that threatening the one in Llanddulas–they formed a consortium, took ownership and are now running it as a successful pub and restaurant. See previous posts. The current management has informed us that. as part of their effort to popularize the pub, they will be erecting a blue plaque later this year commemorating Evelyn Waugh’s association with it. He once lived there with Alastair Graham in a caravan parked in an adjacent field and wrote parts of Rossetti, Vile Bodies, and Black Mischief) as well as the conclusion of Remote People while residing there at various times.

UPDATE (27 June 2018): Edits made in last paragraph re books Waugh wrote at Abingdon Arms.

 

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Histories: A Movement and a Prize

Posted on March 29, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

This week’s issue of the National Review contains a brief article assessing the status of William F Buckley’s conservative movement 10 years after his death. This is by Charles Correll III and begins by defining the questions faced today by Buckley’s movement:

By what set of beliefs should conservatives explain themselves today? To what extent are populism and economic nationalism antithetical to the limited-government ethos of Cold War conservatism? Has the end of the Cold War rendered the philosophy of limited government anachronistic? What shape must responsible conservatism take to address contemporary challenges? These are difficult questions that admit no easy answers.

After considering how the end of the Cold War and the introduction of the internet have effectively splintered conservatism into multiple, not necessarily coherent movements, Correll concludes with this invocation of Evelyn Waugh:

Though deeply indebted to the wisdom of the past, the modern intellectual conservative movement has never been defined by an attachment to a certain period of time, contrary to the claims of its critics and misinterpreters. Instead, it has asked itself — and, as Buckley said, must always ask itself — “what shape should the world take, given modern realities?” Conservativism distinguishes itself from liberalism because it addresses both parts of the question. Put differently, conservatives “acknowledge the need to live in this century,” yet “never, ever, to acclimate” themselves to it, as Buckley said of Evelyn Waugh. The perpetual challenge is to walk the fine line between acknowledging modern realities and becoming afflicted by them. No wonder that Buckley, like Whittaker Chambers, referred to conservatives as “cliff-dancers.”

The Scotsman carries a story reciting the history of the James Tait Black literary prizes in connection with the announcement of its latest shortlist. This award is described in the article by Brian Ferguson as a

… competition run by Edinburgh University for almost a century. … The James Tait Black Prizes, which are awarded annually for the best fiction and biography works published over the previous year, are said to be the only honours of their kind anywhere in the world which are handed out by a university. They are also the only major British book awards which are judged by scholars and students. This year’s contenders were drawn from more than 400 books. The two prizes, each worth £10,000, are traditionally judged by senior staff from within the English literature department, assisted by a reading panel of postgraduate students….[T]he competition was instigated in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black, to commemorate her husband’s “love of good books”. The literary awards ceremony is staged annually during the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The article also names several previous winners among whom are D H Lawrence, Graham Greene and Muriel Spark. Evelyn Waugh was also a winner in 1952 when Men at Arms, the first novel in his war trilogy, was selected.

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Brideshead Actress Dies in France

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Actress Stéphane Audran who played Cara in the 1981 Granada TV production of Brideshead Revisited has died in France at the age of 85. She was married at one time to new wave film director Claude Chabrol and at another, to actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and was probably best known for her lead role in the film Babette’s Feast (1989). She also played in several notable films such as Luis Buñuel’s Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972) as well as other English language TV series such as Poor Little Rich Girl (1987) and The Sun Also Rises (1984). Her obituary appears in today’s Guardian.

In other news, Alexander Waugh will be speaking next month on the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. His will be one of a series of lectures and panels during “Shakespeare Week” (23-26 April) at Brunel University in Uxbridge, West London. Alexander will appear in the program on Tuesday, 24 April and will discuss the topic described as follows:

By deciphering early edition encryptions, tracing hidden geometries and decoding grid patterns, Alexander Waugh says he can prove Shakespeare was not only a myth, he was actually Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford and he’s currently buried in Westminster Abbey. If true, the spirited scholar (who happens to be the grandson of novelist Evelyn Waugh) has lifted the lid on one of the most enduring mysteries of our time. Fantastical claim or revolutionary revelation? Decide for yourself as Alexander shares his evidence.

Finally, in an article in Spear’s magazine about the business of running English Country Houses (or, more to the point, about running English Country Houses as businesses), Waugh is cited near the conclusion:

Evelyn Waugh always said that the English country house – and its ideal – was our country’s greatest contribution to Western civilisation. Marketing ‘full service’ country or coastal properties to HNWs [high-net-worth individuals]– who regard £5,000 a week as a bargain compared to a week in Mustique or the Maldives – is a good idea. Not least because families now want ‘multi-generational’ holidays (bring the grandparents) with some educational, cultural and sporting appeal.

And in the latest issue of Vogue magazine there is an article in its “Wedding” section describing the details of putting together a successful “transatlantic relationship”–i.e., U.S.-U.K. marriage. This is written by Claire Straw who grew up in West Texas (Midland to be precise) but has been married happily for several years to an Englishman. She offers this by way of a descripton of what to expect from the introduction of a young American lady to an Englishman of her own age:

…Englishmen can get away with lots of seemingly feminine but amazingly fun things, like making a soufflé, talking at length about Evelyn Waugh, confessing a love for Winnie-the-Pooh and dressing like Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous for a party. No Texan boy had ever made me laugh with the witticisms, self-assuredness and unabashed romanticism of my new-found English man.

UPDATE (31 March 2018): The following entry appeared in the column of Jennifer Selway, Assistant Editor of the Daily Express:

Let’s revisit Brideshead

The great French film actress Stephane Audran died this week.

British viewers will remember her in her role as Cara, the mistress of Lord Marchmain (Laurence Olivier) in Granada TV’s 1981 production of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

Right now I can’t think of anything nicer than the entire box-set and an uninterrupted Easter weekend – especially if the weather is as foul as we’ve been promised.

UPDATE 2 (11 April 2018): Derek Granger, producer of Granada’s Brideshead TV series, added his own recollections of working with Stéphane Audran in a letter to the Guardian:

…No actress could have confounded more absolutely Charles Ryder’s lurid expectation of “a voluptuous Toulouse-Lautrec odalisque”, or fitted more perfectly Waugh’s own conception: a “middle-aged, well-preserved, well-dressed, well-mannered woman”, the “neat prosaic figure” who briskly marshalled her two undergraduate charges, Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, as she guided them on their tour of the splendours of Venice.

Audran was an actress of great subtlety. In a later scene in Marchmain Palazzo (filmed in the Palazzo Barbaro), in which she gently confronted Charles with the truth about his relationship with Sebastian, her delicate expressiveness provided a masterclass in intimate scene playing.

Away from the set, Audran was an engaging colleague who offered a sometimes surprising twist to the workaday travails of a long location shoot. “Derek, who do you think I met today walking across the Yorkshire dales?” There was a second’s pause: “Derek, it was my skiing instructor.” What followed was a charmingly persuasive request for Granada to add another supernumerary to the hotel budget. The word which most readily conveyed her quality is appropriately a French one: insouciance.

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