Non-Fiction Books
Evelyn Waugh chose the name Labels for his first travel book because, he said, the places he visited were already “fully labeled” in people's minds. But even the most seasoned traveler could not fail to be inspired by Waugh's quintessentially English attitude and his eloquent and frequently outrageous wit. From Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, from Egyptian porters and Italian priests to Maltese sailors and Moroccan merchants—as he cruises around the Mediterranean his pen cuts through the local color to give a highly entertaining portrait of the Englishman abroad.
Ninety-two Days The great author's account of the journey that gave birth to his novel 'A Handful of Dust' makes gripping and often hilarious he travels through Guyana and northern Brazil on foot, horseback and by boat in 1932. The Guardian's reviewer found it 'exquisitely miserable'. Full description
Evelyn Waugh presented his biography of St. Edmund Campion, the Elizabethan poet, scholar and gentleman who became the haunted, trapped and murdered priest as a simple, perfectly true story of heroism and holiness.But it is written with a novelist's eye for the telling incident and with all the elegance and feeling of a master of English prose. From the years of success as an Oxford scholar, to entry into the newly founded Society of Jesus and a professorship in Prague, Campion's life was an inexorable progress towards the doomed mission to England. There followed pursuit, betrayal, a spirited defense of loyalty to the Queen, and a horrifying martyr's death at Tyburn.
In Robbery Under Law, subtitled 'The Mexican Object Lesson', Waugh presents a profoundly unpeaceful Mexican situation as a cautionary tale in which a once great civilisation - greater than the United States at the turn of the twentieth century - has succumbed, within the space of a single generation, to barbarism.
Between 1929 and 1935 Evelyn Waugh travelled widely and wrote four books about his experiences. In this collection he writes, with his customary wit and perception, about a cruise around the Mediterranean; a train trip from Djibouti to Abyssinia to attend Emperor Haile Selassie's coronation in 1930; his travels in Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya and the Congo, coping with unbearable heat and plagued by mosquitoes; a journey to Guyana and Brazil; and his return to Addis Ababa in 1935 to report on the war between Abyssinia and Italy. Waugh's adventures on his travels gave him the ideas for such classic novels as Scoop and Black Mischief.
From Evelyn Waugh, the author of beloved novels such as Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust and Vile Bodies, this is the biography of Ronald Knox - priest, classicist, prolific writer and one of the outstanding men of letters of his time. The renowned Oxford chaplain was a friend of figures such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, and was known for his caustic wit and spiritual wisdom. Evelyn Waugh, his devoted friend and admirer, was asked by Knox to write his biography just before his death in 1957. The result, published after two years of research and writing, is a tribute to a uniquely gifted man: 'the wit and scholar marked out for popularity and fame; the boon companion of a generation of legendary heroes; the writer of effortless felicity and versatility ... who never lost a friend or made an enemy'.
Timing is everything, and in this brilliant travel diary Evelyn Waugh catches Africa and the Levant as it was emerging from the shadow of WW II and into the post- colonial order. He reports on Port Said, Aden, Kenya, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanganyika, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Bechuanaland and South Africa. Waugh was no defender of the established order, but he was no sucker for hype, either. He knew the emergers were going to get something far different from what they expected. "As a traveler Waugh has no equal. His eye takes in everything and he is absolutely fearless. A fine, well observed report of an area that has broken many hearts and hopes." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)
'Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.' Waugh begins his story with heredity, writing of the energetic, literary and sometimes eccentric men and women who, unknown to themselves, contributed to his genius. Save for a few pale shadows, his childhood was warm, bright and serene. The Hampstead and Lancing schooldays which followed were sometimes agreeable, but often not. His life at Oxford - which he evokes in Brideshead Revisited - was essentially a catalogue of friendship. His cool recollection of those hedonistic days is a portrait of the generation of Harold Acton, Cyril Connolly and Anthony Powell. That exclusive world he recalls with elegant wit and precision. He closes with his experiences as a master at a preparatory school in North Wales which inspired Decline and Fall.
This was Evelyn Waugh's first book, published when he was 25. It is an essential part of the Waughn canon, full of that vernal charm which animated his early travel books but which faded from the famous novels of his more savage maturity. Written when there was little general interest in the pre-Raphaelites, after an account of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's tragic and somewhat mysterious life, and provocative pictures of his contemporaries and friends, Waugh concludes dryly that, from many points of view, Rossetti was nothing but a melancholy old fraud. Waughn confesses that nothing in Rossetti's life prepares us for the transcendent beauty of Beata Beatrix, The Beloved and a few other works. This is a biography as outstanding as the art it portrays."The youthful high spirits of the writing makes this a true cultural delight." (The New Statesman)
Evelyn Waugh kept a diary almost continuously from the age of seven until a year before his death in 1966, and extracts from the diaries caused sensation when they were published by in The Observer. Providing the background to the novels which made Waugh famous, these diaries are a sharp and baleful view of the social history of our times.
Whether celebrating Hogarth or savaging Hollywood, mocking modern manners or defending traditional English architecture, inviting readers to 'come inside' the Catholic Church or expressing his contempt for modish Marxism and American-style religion, Evelyn Waugh's journalism is sparkling, sometimes vitriolic and always full of good sense. In this wonderful selection he explores his Oxford youth, his unexpected conversion, his literary enthusiasms (from P. G. Wodehouse to Graham Greene) and the perils of basing fictional characters on real people. Decades after their publication, these pieces still retain their capacity to delight, to surprise and to shock.
"Evelyn Waugh was a loving Husband, a wise and affectionate father and the funniest English novelist of the century. This selection of letters does full justice to these splendid attributes" Phillip Toynbee.
This collection of occasional pieces displays the famous Waugh irreverence, wit, and style as in topical articles, essays, and book reviews he comments on people, places, and the literary scene
Tells the story, via the letters they wrote to each other, of the relationship between Evelyn Waugh, author of "Brideshead Revisited", and Lady Diana Cooper, actress and hostess. The two endearments of Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch were used in the correspondence for over 30 years. His letters were originally thought to be lost until 20 years after his death in 1966 they surfaced in somewhat mysterious circumstances. When the correspondence opens he was 20 and she was not quite 40. He was restless and impatient. She was a daughter of the eight Duke of Rutland, an actress who married a rising politician, Duff Cooper. The editor of these letters is the granddaughter of Lady Diana Cooper and she argues that the correspondents demanded the best from each other and that neither were afraid of expressing their opinions and feelings. Other books by this writer include "Cairo in the War, 1939-45", "The Diana Cooper Scrapbook" and "A Durable Fire: The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper".
A collection of newly recovered letters examines the enduring friendship between Evelyn Waugh and Lady Diana Cooper
Evelyn Waugh was widely loved as one of the funniest and most irreverent writers of his day. This is a collection of his quotes on a range of subjects including religion, morals, manners, journalism, food and travel.
Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh were two of the twentieth century's most amusing and gifted writers, who matched wits and traded literary advice in more than five hundred letters over twenty-two years. Dissecting their friends, criticizing each other's books and concealing their true feelings beneath a barrage of hilarious and knowing repartee, they found it far easier to conduct a friendship on paper than in person. This correspondence provides a colourful glimpse into the literary and social circles of London and Paris, during the Second World War and for twenty years after.
A collection of essays reissued thirty decades after its conception features some of the greatest writers of the century commenting on their favorite deadly sins--from W. H. Auden on Anger to Angus Wilson on Envy. 15,000 first printing. Reprint.
The Coronation of Haile Selassie: Pocket Penguins (Pocket Penguins 70's S.) Waugh, Evelyn