WHO WAS EVELYN WAUGH?
Stage one. Evelyn Waugh lived tempestuously from 1903 to 1966. For four decades he was writing intensely and the subject he was primarily writing about was himself. The mindset of his protagonists, from Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall to Guy Crouchback in the 'Sword of Honour' trilogy, tells us what was happening in Evelyn's life and the layered way in which he was responding to it. The somewhat tired autobiography, A Little Learning, that was published in 1963, clarifies a few facts and gives an overview of his life, but it hardly rivals what the novels collectively give to his readers.
In 1975, I was a teenager, someone whose only experience was home and school - and from a beanbag in that home, via Penguin editions of the novels of Evelyn Waugh - I was transported, laughing, into a wider-world-cum-parallel-universe: Oxford University, Mayfair society, English country houses, Abyssinia, the Amazon Jungle. What a bizarre preparation for the challenges of late 20th Century life! Thank-you, Evelyn Waugh.
Stage two. Once Waugh died, his importance as a writer was underlined by the slow but sure appearance of biographical material. Friend and fellow Catholic, Christopher Sykes, published a biography in 1975. The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh came out in 1976 and the entries concerning Evelyn's debauched lifestyle at Oxford created a sensation when they were serialised in the Times. Next, The Letters of Evelyn Waugh was published in 1980, full of sparkling correspondence with longstanding friends such as Nancy Mitford, Anthony Powell, Ann Fleming and Graham Greene. And a picture was building up of an extraordinarily lively yet deeply flawed individual, the author of novels that uniquely lit up his readers' minds.
The Granada production of Brideshead Revisited in 1981 took Evelyn Waugh's fame onto another level. The script made use of almost every word in the novel and the series was the most lauded piece of television of its era. Martin Stannard was then commissioned to write an authorised biography of Evelyn Waugh. The first volume (1903 to 1939) came out in 1986 and the second volume (1940 to 1966) came out in 1992. In the meantime, Selina Hastings had also been commissioned, and her massive, single volume biography appeared in 1994. One might think that two such substantial, virtually simultaneous biographies was overkill, but the books complement each other and the ongoing interest in Evelyn Waugh floated both boats.
The amorphous thing that I'm going to call 'Waugh Studies' seemed to stall at that point. There was now an awful lot of primary material swilling around waiting to be absorbed. Readers could combine their enjoyment of an Evelyn Waugh novel with the biographical context from whence it came. And though it wasn't at first apparent, it eventually became obvious that the interest in Evelyn Waugh was gaining momentum.
Stage three of what can be thought of as a rocket. In 2004, Alexander Waugh published Fathers and Sons, about three generations of male Waugh writers. In 2009, Paula Byrne wrote Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the secrets of Brideshead. And in 2013, one of the subjects of Duncan Fallowell's How to Disappear: a memoir for misfits was Alastair Graham, Evelyn's lover when he was at Oxford. All three books disclosed fascinating new information about Evelyn Waugh, his associates and his time.
In 2011, there was a conference about Evelyn Waugh which took place at Downside School in Somerset, where Evelyn had lived a large chunk of his life. I was there, and the event was both fascinating and full of absurdities that I associate with Black Mischief or The Loved One or Scott King's Modern Europe. This was followed in 2015 by a more professional symposium at Leicester, where the aforementioned Martin Stannard is Professor of English. This event, organised largely by Barbara Cooke, was partly to draw attention to a massive project which had been instigated by Alexander Waugh, Evelyn's grandson. 'The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh' in 47 volumes, each with a definitive text, notes and scholarly introduction, was to be published over many years by OUP.
2015 was also the year that my own book, Evelyn! Rhapsody for an Obsessive Love stumbled into print. I say stumbled because as early as 2009 (I think it was) Alexander Waugh had written to me:
Dear Duncan,
I have just finished your book and concur entirely with John Howard Wilson. I think it is absolutely brilliant, breezy, very funny, original, erudite, beautifully written, fascinating in every detail, moving, generous, charming and thoroughly deserving of a good publisher. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to help you find one.
My only reservation is the title [Evelyn Resurrected] - not that it's bad - but I don't think it's what today's semi-literate commercially minded publishers will want. Can you have a think about it? I must say nothing springs immediately to my mind. There was an Alain de Botton book called "How Proust Changes your Life" or something like that, which sold millions - not nearly as good as your book, but it was the title that swung it. Perhaps "Evelyn" on its own would be better. I don't know, I'm not good at titles but perhaps if you went and had a few pints of Badger at the Barley Mow, something might occur. But I think it needs something arresting, possibly intriguing - something anyway that captures the magnificent zest of your book which the present title I think fails to do.
You said you had tried a few agents and been rejected. Was Andrew Wylie among them? (The Wylie Agency) If not I will happily send this copy onto them with my strongest recommendations. They are the agents for Evelyn Waugh Estate and I can easily put it to them that this book is, among so much else, a wonderful advertisement for Waugh.
Let me know what you would like me to do.
Very best wishes and warmest congratulations,
Alexander
How generous and kind is that? In the months to come, Alexander introduced me by email to both the agent of the Estate of Evelyn Waugh and his own literary agent. But, oddly enough, neither was keen on finding a publisher for my work. It was in 2010 that Beautiful Books declared that it totally wanted to publish Evelyn! A few months before the scheduled publishing date, in the playground of Downside School during the 2011 Evelyn Waugh conference, Alexander tried to warn me that Beautiful Books might be in financial difficulties. But so excited was I by the prospect of presenting a talk to the Evelyn Waugh conference based on the proof copy I had of my Beautiful Book, that his wise, anticipatory counsel passed over my head.
When Beautiful Books went into administration shortly thereafter, I began working on this website. I added to it with zeal from 2014 to 2021 (by which time my manuscript was long published by Harbour Books, and since when my main interest has passed onto another subject). During the years (from 2021) that I have been writing about On Kawara, conceptual artist, Alexander Waugh was trying to prove that the Duke of Oxford had been responsible for writing the plays long attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford, wool merchant. I was looking forward to discussing Alexander's brilliant 'Who Wrote Shakespeare?' research, and to asking him when the outstanding volumes of CWEW subtitled 'Personal Writings' were due to see the light of day, when I heard the tragic news that Alexander had died in the summer 2024, at the relatively young age of 60.
I suspect the 'Complete Works' project has stalled. The 13 individual volumes that have been printed already, retail for about £100 each, and only a few libraries will have been able to afford to invest in them. The first of 12 volumes of 'Personal Writings' featuring Evelyn Waugh's schoolboy diary was one of those that did appear, edited by Alan Bell (deceased) and Alexander Waugh. But I for one was looking forward to reading, for example, the hundred-odd previously unpublished letters that adult Evelyn had sent 'Baby' Jungman. There is still no sign of that book appearing, 11 years after the finding of the letters was announced in the national press.
Perhaps subsequent CWEW volumes will be published exclusively online, but then who will have access to them? I would like the opportunity of updating - with brand new insights - many of my own essays. But if you have to be a member of a university, I may find it hard to access the material. I am not an academic. That's why, according to the aforementioned John Howard Wilson, who once headed the Evelyn Waugh Society, I am able to write 10-times as much original research as anyone chained to a university post. Sweet John pre-deceased Alexander who delivered a eulogy to him at the Leicester symposium.
As for this website, how long will it be able to survive? Rapidweaver, the program I've used to create the site, becomes unstable unless I keep updating my Mac's operating system. The server that hosts the site seems a reliable one, but exists in a fast-changing world. I hope to be able to keep the lights on (I think of it as an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT) for another ten years or so, but after that? Is the Waugh rocket doomed to come down to earth with a whimper as it splashes into the middle of the Atlantic or, more appropriately perhaps, the Amazon basin?
I try not to worry too much about legacy. I have greatly enjoyed myself while researching these essays. I have visited the Welsh school that inspired the first half of Decline and Fall, and I have taken a ferry to the Scottish island where odd things happened to Evelyn Waugh that were lightly fictionalised in the first half of Officers and Gentlemen. I have drunk to moderation in really rather a lot of the pubs Evelyn and his characters drank excessively in, including The Barley Mow and the Abingdon Arms at Beckley. I have trespassed in the grounds of Piers Court (where Evelyn lived en famille for ten years) and have visited, on many occasions, the Temple at Barford, where young Evelyn and equally young Alastair disported themselves like Charles and Sebastian in the pages of Brideshead… Oh, and when the 'Brideshead Revisited Festival' proposed for Castle Howard in 2020 was cancelled because of Covid, I came up with my own Brideshead Festival, bringing Evelyn and his peers back from the dead, which can be experienced in a section towards the end of this site.
How did Evelyn put it in his preface to When the Going Was Good, the book that preserved for post-WW2 readers what the author wished to be saved of his pre-war travel books?
'Perhaps it is a good thing for English literature. In two generations the air will be fresher and we may again breed great travellers like Beaton and Connolly. I never aspired to being a great traveller. I was simply a young man, typical of my age; we travelled as a matter of course. I rejoice that I went when the Waughing was good.'
I hope the spirit of Evelyn Waugh nods an approval of these mischievously misquoted words and smiles ironically at the notion that eighty years on I am applying them to myself.
DUNCAN McLAREN
BLAIRGOWRIE
MARCH, 2025
