Search Results

“... was ‘excessively sprightly’ and in need of American rigour. She didn’t like having to pay Evelyn Waugh 20 guineas an article either (the going rate was 12). Vogue swung like a pendulum with the moral moment: one issue covered Wallis Simpson’s dresses (by Molyneux and Mainbocher) and aperçus – the former Mrs Spencer serves seeded white grapes ...”

“... His time there, which included many subplots and escapades, needs a comic novelist such as Evelyn Waugh, J.G. Farrell or indeed the Mario Vargas Llosa of The Time of the Hero or Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter rather than this ponderous stylist. In Germany Casement hoped to meet Irish prisoners of war filled with the same spirit of romantic ...”

“... and translator of the Bible, a writer of detective stories and the subject of a biography by Evelyn Waugh. Penelope’s father was in religion a sceptic and by vocation a wit. When asked if he had plans to write a memoir, he responded: ‘Must We Have Lives?’ As a child, Penelope, aka Mops or Mopsa, far outshone her older brother, Rawle. Her ...”

“... in Casey’s account only by spiritualism, Mormonism and those American burial practices mocked by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One: all forms of kitsch, amusingly disdained by Casey. And illogically disdained too: why is the tombstone of an enthusiastic American bowler, who died at the age of 31, and which is marked with the motto ‘scoring in ...”

“... merits of his work? What about it? Do you think he didn’t know? Reviewing a biography of Evelyn Waugh in 1975, Amis reflected that he was glad he had never met the author of work that he so much admired, not least because he would probably have been on the receiving end of a savagely rude put-down. ‘It was his nature to go too far, most of all ...”

“... 1949 (The Chronicle of a Friendship), describing a meeting between the Stravinskys and the Evelyn Waughs, he had dolefully observed that if Waugh ‘does not brook the literary talk of literary types, he certainly seems to enjoy it from outsiders like (though no one is quite like) the I.S.’s and even from ...”

“... be fresh, affectionate and grateful. It is sometimes difficult to achieve novelty, especially when Evelyn Waugh’s Diary has left a minefield of disobliging references to be explained away. A visit to the Paris Embassy in 1946 found Waugh much put out by having his bugbear Quennell staying there as an unexpected fellow ...”

“... responsible, but I think it has played a part in the visible degradation of British journalism. Evelyn Waugh is beginning to look like a master of understatement. The popular press has gone, someone said, from gutter to sewer. And too many newspapers cover political life largely as transmission belts for unexamined assertions by politicians. In such ...”

“... if I’m not joggled,’ he may be saying to some anxious lady. There is a suggestion of the later Evelyn Waugh. Still, though the method can produce boss shots, the sturdy indifference to received opinion, the basic earnestness and the eye open to the whole scene, allow her to come out with important judgments. Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, as it now ...”

“... as does simple perversity; and they may affect to love the most overlooked of their progeny. Thus Evelyn Waugh used to claim that his favourite novel was Helena. Though Salammbô was a greater financial and social success than Madame Bovary – it became a meme, and the inspiration for ballgowns – most knew that Flaubert’s first novel was his ...”

“... with this process: the stubby, solid figure, with its big head and staring eyes, as though Evelyn Waugh had been reincarnated as a Roundhead; the dark three-piece suit, an interposing formality signalling that ceremony is a proper thing to stand on; the shadowed, book-lined interiors in which he sits, robed and ready to pass judgment. It is all ...”

“... came from his salary as an MP. Even his tastes in fiction, where his favourite modern authors were Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, suggested the claret-loving socialite rather than the mining-bred socialist. During his second spell at the Home Office in 1974-76 he oversaw important legislation promoting gender and racial equality, and introduced a much ...”

“... egalitarian spirit, when a highpoint of homogeneity became a moment of social change. Evelyn Waugh, he claims, was demobbed because of fears he would be shot by the men under his command. And when Churchill, visiting down-at-heel Camberwell during the Blitz, made a speech that concluded with the words ‘We can take it,’ a heroic voice ...”

“... are rightish, its stance prurient, and its key figures Nigel Dempster, Peter McKay and Auberon Waugh. The radical lampoon has become required reading on the magazine syllabus of every Sloane Ranger. Moreover, the Eye, that fearless exposer of the faintest mafia, now runs a comfortable little establishment of its own. Consider how this book might appear to ...”

“... was about Randolph Churchill having a tumour removed and the tumour turning out to be benign and Evelyn Waugh saying that they had removed the only part of Randolph that wasn’t malignant. The doctor laughed. He seemed like a good-humoured guy. He checked that I would be able to inject myself in the stomach every night with some blood-thinning ...”