Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited

Author(s): Philip Eade

Literary

Evelyn Waugh was described by Graham Greene as 'the greatest novelist of my generation', yet reckoned by Hilaire Belloc to have been possessed by the devil. Waugh's literary reputation has continued to rise since Greene's assessment in 1966. Fifty years on from his death, Philip Eade takes a fresh look at this famously complex character and tells the full story of his dramatic, colourful and frequently bizarre life: his strained relationship with his sentimental father and blatantly favoured elder brother, and the burning ambition they provoked in him; his formative homosexual love affairs at Oxford; his disastrous first marriage and subsequent conversion to Roman Catholicism; his unrequited love for the brightest of the bright young people; his complex interest in the aristocracy and what the aristocrats made of him; his insane bravery yet chequered wartime career; his drug-induced madness; his strangely successful second marriage; his unconventional attitude to his six children; his sharp tongue; his devastating wit; the love, fear and loathing that he variously inspired. Scrupulously researched and sympathetically written, this is a sparkling and compelling new biography of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century - and one of England's most mythologised eccentrics.


Product Information

If you like your Waugh fast, furious and funny, there is much to enjoy in Philip Eade's sparkling Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited ... Waugh's letters are a joy to read, and Eade's coup is his access to a hitherto unpublished cache of them -- Paula Byrne THE TIMES EVELYN WAUGH: A LIFE REVISITED represents a sort of tipping point: Eade's even-handedness gently but firmly nudges Waugh's work centre stage again ... Eade is excellent on tracing the sources of Waugh's delights and horrors, from his life to his work and back again: the failures, the successes, the disappointments, the endless grist to the authorial mill -- Ian Sansom LITERARY REVIEW Philip Eade makes the case that now is the time to revisit Waugh and see if some of the old charges of cynicism, snobbery and emotional cruelty really hold true. The result is a bright, breezy and sympathetic portrait that stops just the right side of sentimental -- Kathryn Hughes MAIL ON SUNDAY

Philip Eade was born in Shropshire and read History at Bristol University. He was briefly a criminal barrister and later worked as a writer and editor on the obituaries desk of the Daily Telegraph. He lives in London and the Welsh marches.

General Fields

  • : 9780297609483
  • : Orion Publishing Co
  • : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  • : 0.632
  • : December 2016
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : April 2016
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Philip Eade
  • : Paperback
  • : 1
  • : en
  • : 823.912
  • : 416