Evelyn Waugh
By (Author) Michael Barber
Hesperus Press Ltd
Hesperus Press Ltd
22nd February 2013
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
823.912
Paperback
135
Width 125mm, Height 195mm, Spine 11mm
145g
Evelyn Waugh was the finest novelist of his generation in England, the 'Commanding Officer' mourned by Graham Greene. He also lived a life less ordinary than most, which, like his alter ego Pinfold's, became increasingly stylised and anachronistic as the class he had gate-crashed lost its pre-eminence in the Age of the Common Man. By the time he died, halfway through the 'swinging sixties', he was regarded as, at best, a museum piece. Then, following the posthumous publication of his riveting Diaries and Letters, he and his work experienced a renaissance that continues to this day, and not just in the English-speaking world. Rather like Hemingway, another writer imprisoned within his own fantasy, Waugh has now achieved mythical status. Michael Barber examines the man behind the myth, his writings and their significance then and now.
Michael Barber is a writer and broadcaster who conducted a Paris Review interview with Anthony Powell and wrote Powell's entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.