Major seven-part adaptation of Sword of Honour trilogy coming to BBC Radio this year

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

From The Stage:

A BBC awards scheme that launched the careers of actors such as Stephen Tompkinson and Richard Griffiths has named this year’s winners, with all the recipients being cast in a major seven-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy.

The Carleton Hobbs bursary award, which this year marks its 60th anniversary, gives four actors graduating from drama school a contract with the BBC Radio Drama Company. Formerly known as the BBC Repertory Company, actors working with the RDC perform in plays, series, dramatisations and readings that are broadcast on Radio 3, Radio 4, the World Service and Radio 4 Extra.

This year’s winners have all been cast in an adaptation of Waugh’s Sword of Honour – which comprises the novels Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender. Sword of Honour has been dramatised by Jeremy Front for Radio 4 and will be broadcast in September.

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Joy unbounded: Spectator archive now online

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

The Spectator has made available online a searchable archive of 180 years (1828 – 2008) of the magazine. Initial search results can be further refined by category: Article, Letter, Fiction, etc., which will be a boon to researchers of all kinds.

Some sample queries of the archive: Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Henry Green, Anthony Powell, Nancy Spain.

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The Fertile Fact: Speculative biographical writing

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

The Fertile Fact is a new literary website which “celebrates the speculative nature of biographical writing. We invite biographers/experts/super-fans to draw on their knowledge and compile a list of five things or aspects of modern life that they think their biographee/subject/idol, were they writing/exploring/creating today, might have liked or loathed.

Two recent posts concerned Evelyn Waugh, the first with Selina Hastings, and the second with Michael Barber.

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Selina Hastings’s Evelyn Waugh republished

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Evelyn Waugh, the highly regarded 1995 biography by Selina Hastings, is being republished in the UK this month by Capuchin Classics, with publication in the US later this year.

Several author lectures and books signings have been scheduled to coincide with the republication of the book, at which Ms. Hastings will discuss her biography and the relationship between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.

May 9th, 6:30 p.m., free
Belgravia Books, 59 Ebury Street, London SW1W 0NZ. Email (click to email) to book your place.

May 15th, 7:00 p.m., tickets £7
Last Tuesday Society, Location: 11 Mare Street, London E8 4RP. Tickets can be purchased online.

May 20th, 7:00 p.m., £2 donation suggested
Primrose Hill Community Library, Sharpleshall Street, London NW1 8YN

A full listing of these events can be found at the author’s website.

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Lancing College remembers Brideshead Revisited

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

A report by Sussex Living magazine on the 2013 Evelyn Waugh Lecture at Lancing College.

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“Isn’t it true that the only liquid Americans drink is ice water?”

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Dave Wood, of the (Wisconsin) River Falls Journal, considers Evelyn Waugh and recalls a story told him by the Roman Catholic American author and sometime Waugh houseguest J. F. Powers.

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Sunset Boulevard’s debt to The Loved One

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Thanks to Steve Sailer for drawing to our attention his article in Taki’s Magazine about how much Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard is derived from Waugh’s The Loved One, which Wilder had tried to get the movie studio to buy for him.

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Lancing College 2013 Evelyn Waugh Lecture announced

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Lancing College, the school which Evelyn Waugh attended between 1917 and 1921, has announced that the 2013 Evelyn Waugh Lecture will be given on April 18th by Anthony Andrews, the actor who played Sebastian Flyte in the celebrated Granada Television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, and Derek Granger, the producer of the series. The event is by invitation only.

Mr. Granger shared his Brideshead reminiscences and some video clips with appreciative members of the Evelyn Waugh Society at the third Evelyn Waugh Conference held in the UK in August 2011.

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BBC Radio 4 discussion of Decline and Fall

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

On Feb. 21, on the BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time, David Bradshaw (Professor of English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford), John Bowen (Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of York) and Ann Pasternak Slater (Senior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford and an honorary vice president of the Evelyn Waugh Society) joined Melvyn Bragg  to discuss Evelyn Waugh’s comic novel Decline and Fall.

You can listen to the permanently archived discussion here.

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Transcript of Lancing College 2012 Evelyn Waugh Lecture now online

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Antony F. P. Vickery

The fourth (2012) annual Lancing College Evelyn Waugh Lecture was given on April 19th, 2012 by Reverend Professor Richard Griffiths, who discussed Waugh’s Lancing diaries and the lessons that can be learned from them in relation to his other written works. A transcript of the lecture is linked here.

Evelyn Waugh was a pupil at Lancing between 1917 and 1921.

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