How can a book be so current and so dated at the same time? This was at the forefront of our minds as we met to discuss Waugh’s 1938 parody of Fleet Street and the world of foreign correspondents. The book is drawn from Waugh’s own experiences as a journalist in Abyssinia, but far more […]
In light of the V&A recently making available around 200 previously unpublished letters between Laurence Olivier and his then wife Vivien Leigh I decided to do some searching of Waugh’s letters and diaries to see if he ever referred to the pair. Along with references to his attendance at the 1955 production of Titus Andronicus […]
In January, a small cohort of the Book Group met to discuss the last book in Waugh’s “Sword of Honour” trilogy: Unconditional Surrender, which appeared for the first time in 1961. It nearly did not appear at all; Waugh struggled with its writing, and at one point it looked as if Officers and Gentlemen (1955) […]
On 20 December last year John Freeman – soldier, Labour politician and television interviewer – died aged 99. As an interviewer for the BBC, Freeman will be remembered for his series Face to Face (1959-62) with its distinctive format and Freeman’s brand of incisive questioning. His style was at the core of the show’s depth […]
The first thing we noticed about the second book in Waugh’s trilogy was the ambivalence of its title. Playing on the traditional description of a man as ‘an officer and a gentleman’, the plural form ‘officers and gentlemen’ instead implies that a man can be rather one or the other: and there are very few […]
‘The most wonderful time of the year’ is quickly approaching. Over the next week or so many of us will skitter into the overheated realms of corporate Christmas in a slight panic, hoping to find the perfect present. However, Evelyn Waugh was particularly dismayed in 1946 to find that hardly any of his […]
It felt particularly apt to be discussing Men at Arms, the first in Waugh’s World War II trilogy, on remembrance weekend. Our thoughts naturally flowed from discussing this conflict to other wars, both distant and uncomfortably close. In this trilogy, Waugh is more overtly autobiographical than he has ever been before. While many of his […]
Firstly I must apologise for it taking a whole week to get this post up! It has been very busy at Waugh towers over the past few days. The Evelyn Waugh themed cocktail party was an event held in association with the Leicester Everybody’s Reading festival, the University of Leicester, and of course, the very […]
It has been a busy few weeks for the Evelyn Waugh book group, what with the 1920s party on Thursday 2nd October (photographs coming soon!). Our meeting on Saturday the 27th September saw us talking about Waugh’s 1948 novel The Loved One. Grim, funny and darkly satirical, it tells the story of Dennis Barlow’s experiences […]
You can now book your free place at this event here. What: Party like it’s 1929! Come to the Old Hundreth and celebrate with the Evelyn Waugh Book Group as we read extracts from our favourite Waugh books, ranging from the black comedy of A Handful of Dust to bittersweet Brideshead Revisited. Sip […]
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