A dramatic adaptation by Christina Drollas of Brideshead Revisited opens at the Corpus Christi College Auditorium in Oxford on Tuesday, June 14th. Tickets. Sarah Gashi provides a preview in The Oxford Student.
Professor Marc DiPaolo of Okalahoma City University is compiling a book of essays on controversial theology in fiction. He would like to include an essay on Brideshead Revisited, as well as essays on Graham Greene, C. S. Lewis, G. B. Shaw, etc. Essays should be 6,000-8,500 words in length, accompanied by an abstract of no more than 250 words and a 30-40 word biographical
sketch. Dr. DiPaolo can be contacted by email at (click to email) and by phone at (405) 306-2103.
England's Colchester Bookshop is offering for sale a copy of Decline and Fall inscribed to Osbert Sitwell. From the listing at AbeBooks.com:
An exceptional association and presentation copy from the very beginning of Evelyn Waugh's career as an author, dated within 12 days of publication of his first novel, (published 18 September 1928). Waugh was a regular visitor to the Sitwells, the last entry in his diaries before publication of Decline & Fall recording that he drank too much while dining with Osbert three days before drawing the dust jacket. Evelyn Waugh's signature is comparable to that used in his letters in 1928, and less florid than that found in most other presentation copies, which appear to have been inscribed some months or years after publication. This sets the current copy apart as extraordinarily rare; one of very few copies of his first novel that Waugh would have distributed to selected members of his social circle on publication, among whom Osbert Sitwell was arguably the most senior literary figure.
As of the date of this post, the asking price is US $20,126.99, plus $6.51 shipping.
Penguin UK's 2011 publication schedule includes seventeen books by Evelyn Waugh, all hardbacks except for The Complete Short Stories, which will be in paperback.
Beautiful Books will be publishing in September a new biography of Evelyn Waugh by Duncan McLaren, Evelyn!: Rhapsody for an Obsessive Love
Duncan McLaren, the acclaimed biographer of Enid Blyton, here turns his attention to Evelyn Waugh, charting a very personal course through Waugh’s life, up until the writing and publication of his final novel, Unconditional Surrender.
Adopting the same disruptive and inquisitive approach as his previous works, McLaren manages to produce an entirely new portrait of Evelyn Waugh to those painted by more traditional recent biographies.
Beginning with his own personal obsession with Decline and Fall, McLaren embarks on a real journey with his partner Kate to many of the key places in Waugh’s life, discovering along the way new insights into the triangular relationship between Waugh, his wife Evelyn Gardner and the man she left him for, John Heygate.
Both sympathetic and inimitably curious, McLaren manages to bring one of our greatest writers to life in a completely unorthodox, but very literary, manner.
"Evelyn Waugh was a pupil at Lancing during the 1930s, and wrote much about his time at the College. A portrait bust, which has been presented to the School, was unveiled by Tom Waugh, its sculptor and grandson of Evelyn Waugh, at drinks before the 2011 Lancing Foundation Dinner. The bust will be located in the Sanderson Room, which is the old library where Evelyn Waugh spent a great deal of his time as librarian." [Lancing College]
Update (March 29): A commenter points out that Waugh was not at Lancing during the 1930s and suggests 1917 to 1921 as more reasonable dates. Indeed, these are the ones provided by Martin Stannard in his Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903-1939
"Brideshead Regurgiated: Is the cult of Brideshead among Cantabridgians harmless fun, or does it conceal a regressive social agenda?" [Daniel Janes, The Cambridge Student]
The Bonham's auction Papers & Portraits: The Roy Davids Collection Part II, to be held on March 29th, includes three lots related to Evelyn Waugh: two photographic portraits (lots 245 and 246), and an unpublished letter (lot 247).
Viewing dates and other information is available here (enter "waugh" in the "Description contains" field to see only the Waugh-related items).
Update (March 30): Lot 245, a 1963 portrait of Waugh in the grounds of Combe Florey House by Mark Gerson, showing Waugh "full-length facing the camera, wearing his hat and famous dog-tooth check three-piece suit, his hands thrust into the side pockets of his jacket, standing between a pair of sphinx ornaments," sold for £840. Lot 246, a 1948 portrait of Waugh by Carl Van Vechten, appears not to have sold. Lot 247, an unpublished letter from Waugh to Terence Concannon, also fetched £840.
Lancing College parents are invited to attend this year's Evelyn Waugh Lecture, to be given on March 21st by playwright, screen writer, and film director Christopher Hampton, an old boy of the school. Lancing inaugurated the annual lecture in 2008 as a mark of respect for Evelyn Waugh, a distinguished former pupil. The playwright Sir David Hare gave the first lecture, and Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn Waugh, was the guest speaker in 2009. [Lancing College]
A restaurant reviewer pays a happy visit to The Abingdon Arms pub in Beckley, Oxfordshire, where "Evelyn Waugh shared a caravan in the yard with his friend Alastair Graham in 1925 while writing Vile Bodies, that 'welter of sex and snobbery', as he called it." [Christopher Gray, Oxford Times]
