Not even the traumas of World War II could put Evelyn Waugh's delightfully satirical pen on hold; the horrors of war expose the grimness beneath his humor and invite a new kind of irreverence. Consider a scene in "Put Out More Flags" (1942) in which a woman's husband has just been killed in combat and the man with whom she's been having an affair wastes no time in proposing marriage. Her lackadaisical response to this most solemn of requests: "Yes, I think so. Neither of us could ever marry anyone else, you know."

Like Wodehouse, but with greater subtlety, Waugh finds an underlying silliness in all types of characters and sets them up to be knocked down like ducks in a shooting gallery. In "Put Out More Flags," he dredges up some characters from previous novels and introduces them into comic situations within the context of the incipient European war (1939-1940). Foremost among them is Basil Seal, a thirty-six-year-old who is as unemployable as a six-year-old. His mother tries to help him get a prestigious position in the Army, but he blows it when he unintentionally and unknowingly insults the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Bombardiers. Fortunately, he is able to get a job with the War Department where he discovers that the secret to success is to level charges of Communism and Nazism against his (mostly) innocent friends and inform on them.

Basil's friends and family also make the most of war time. Ambrose Silk, a Jewish atheist, takes advantage of his job at the Religious Department of the Ministry of Information to start a fustian periodical. Alastair Trumpington, a pampered aristocrat, dutifully enlists as a soldier because he believes that "he would make as good a target as anyone else for the King's enemies to shoot at," while his wife Sonia waits for him in the car outside the training camp like a mother picking up her kid at school. Meanwhile, Basil's sister Barbara is allowing the use of their country estate as a shelter for poor people evacuating London for fear of German bombing raids; among them are a trio of insufferable brats named the Connollys who provide Basil with the fodder for an irresistible extortion scheme.

Waugh's great insight was the immediate recognition of the potential humor of the war's impact on the British class conflict, and therein lies his brilliance. His books are funny, but more importantly, they're every bit as intelligent, perceptive, and well-written as any "serious" novel, whose level of social consciousness they rival. The twentieth century needed an Evelyn Waugh, and we certainly could use one now.

It's vintage Waugh, standing halway between the farcical funny ones and the serious ones. He's unique in being a satirist of the idiocy of war who can also deal with patriotism and courage.
This is set in that strange time when Britain had just gone to war but France had not fallen. You meet some characters from his other books. This added to the pleasure for me but I don't know if it's the one I would recommend to someone who'd never read any Waugh before. It also helps if you know something about the 1930's British literary scene and can recognize who is being satirized. Parsnip and Pimpernell are presumably Auden and Spender. I've heard of various candidates fir being Ambose Silk.

In this novel, Waugh brilliantly satirizes the English middle and upper class reactions to World War II. From the men who dress up in uniform and play soldier like little boys to the rogues who try to profit from war-time hysteria, Waugh finds plenty of targets. This book reads like a more socially-conscious P.G. Wodehouse. Quite funny, with a lot of truth hidden behind the laughs.

Critics have tended to split Evelyn Waugh into two authors: the hysterically funny satirist who wrote books like "Vile Bodies" and "The Loved One," and the very conservative Catholic writer who gave us "Brideshead Revisited" and other works. Patey shatters this shallow understanding, demonstrating convincingly that Waugh's satire, like Swift's, is solidly based on a system of positive values -- in Waugh's case, pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic religion. Patey's treatment of this aspect of Waugh, so central to him as a writer and as a man, is simply masterful. I have always found this side of Waugh distasteful, but through Patey, I found myself pulled into an intense and exciting dialogue with Waugh and his beliefs. The treatment of Waugh's life is equally superb. Perhaps more than any other genre, satire requires a knowledge of its historical context to be appreciated. Patey seems to know everything about everyone Waugh ever met, and to have read and understood everything Waugh might ever have read. He has synthesized it all and delivered it in a prose style so clear and unobtrusive that you don't appreciate it until you reflect on what he's accomplished with it. And he lets Waugh make all the jokes. There's much about Waugh to dislike, but Patey provides an understanding of the man and his art that reconciles us to him. And besides, how can you hold a grudge against an author who names a character Aimee Thanatogenous?

If anyone who wishes to learn more about the life and the works of Evelyn Waugh, this may not be the biography for him. Currently, there are three major biographies of Waugh-Stannard, Sykes, and Patey. Stannard's work is cumbersome, and often his prose is awkward, but it is certainly well worth reading for its inclusiveness. Sykes is more of a reminiscence of friendship, including anecdotes that he was privy to. Patey is the first author of apply high literary criticism to Waugh in the kind of form that a professor is apt to do. He responds specifically to continual problems raised in Waugh scholarship and provides far more coherent and concrete answers than Stannard or Sykes even attempt. He organizes the biography with an eye on chronology, but also addresses issues thematically which is brilliant, and simple, but what few literary biographies do. Bravo Mr. Patey! Thank you very much for your hard work on this matter. His biography is also meticulously footnoted.

Though half the length of the other standard biographies (Sykes, Stannard, and Hastings), Patey's book is more interesting and more insightful. He provides a context for Waugh's thoughts, so that some of EW's positions seem less strange. Patey also defends Waugh's books against the vicious criticism to which they have often been subjected. Another strength is Patey's explanation of what redeems even the non-Catholic characters. The surprising answer: the ability to love. Patey doesn't carry this point all the way through, and sometimes he seems too sympathetic to Waugh. Still, I'd rather re-read his biography than any of the others.

Once again Ms. Mosley has submitted for public consumption a fascinating collection. The letters that flew back and forth between these two literary giants are sparkling, witty, nasty and fabulous. They shed light on a glorious world of nobility and debauchery. Their correspondence fixes in my mind the fact that Nancy Mitford is the greatest mind of this century. Genius! Sheer genius!

Brava, Ms. Mosley, brava!

Poor Evelyn (talented, grumpy, constantly worrying about money) writes to lovely Nancy (talented, cheerful, constantly worrying about her Colonel) about real or imagined slights. Nancy charmingly takes him down a few notches when he deserves it (sometimes he's a bit of a bully). It is a joy to read the letters, even the squabbles (but especially the gossip - I'll never think of Graham Greene in quite the same way again). The comfort of old friends. How I shrieked!! (as Nancy would say)

This biography of the English saint and martyr Edmund Campion won the Hawthornden Prize in 1936, and I read it because of that. It is very well-written , tho it lacks a bibliography and footnotes. Campion was executed Dec. 1, 1581, after being sentenced to "be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight, then your head to be cut off and your body divided into four parts." It surely makes one grateful for the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishmnet. This is a fast read and eminently worth reading.

As the final and easily the best volume in Waugh's Sword of Honor Trilogy, this book manages to stay light and amusing while dealing with the greatest taboo subject of twentieth century literature: man's relationship with God. Waugh handles the weighty topic with the same dexterity with which he treats all of his subjects, never bogging down and keeping the reader laughing. The story also provides interesting historical material on both WWII and the disappearance of the English aristocracy. I would recommend reading Men at Arms and Officers & Gentlemen, the first two volumes of the trilogy, to be able to follow the story and the significance of the events.

The best biography I have read of Waugh. In fact, one of the best biographies I have ever read. The depth of research is most impressive. The style of writing is very agreeable.

Evelyn Waugh wrote very funny, sophisticated novels about the British upper and bohemian classes. His short novel Helena is set in the late Roman empire, long before those categories existed, at least as we know them. It is about the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, and her search for the True Cross in fourth century Palestine, after a life of imperial politics that took her from one end of the known world to the other. She was not active in politics, but born and married into it, being the daughter of a British Celtic chief (whom Waugh names Cole)and the wife of Chlorus, a Roman aristocrat and soldier who was the father of the future emperor. The first two-thirds of the book is a beautifully written fictional account of her life at the top, and we discover that after all there was an upper class with bohemian hangers-on not unlike Britain's in the last century. Waugh creates a completely convincing imperial court that is treacherous and sophisticated, and a very convincing saint who discovers her purpose in life in it. The supporting figures in the novel--a tutor; an architect; a humble, over-worked bishop; a pair of coniving witches--are among the best things in the book.

From the first page to the last Waugh sweats his way around Guiana, a country he confesses early on he never even meant to visit, exuding contempt from every pore.

It is unusual for a travel writer to show so much dislike for his chosen destination while still managing to carry his audience along with him. Partly this derives from Waugh's finely turned humour; partly the lack of foreknowledge most readers will have on such a rarely visited territory; and mainly from the succession of luminous characters that he bequeaths us to light the way along his lonely and fly-bitten road.

Guyana is a fascinating place and occupies an important niche in British travel literature. Walter Ralegh's travelogue "The Discoverie of Guiana" is now recognised as being the first major modern English prose work, predating Bacon's "Essays", and there have been a steady stream of excellent and varied accounts ever since.

Part of this fascination must stem from the long held assumption that Guiana was the kingdom of the legendary king "El Dorado"; certainly it was this that led Ralegh there in search of glory, and ultimately led him there again fatefully two decades later. Nevertheless the stamp of character of a country is a reflection of its people, and Guyana, as the former British colony is now called, has always borne such characters in abundance. As Waugh himself, Judge Henry Kirke ("25 Years In British Guiana"), Gerald Durrell ("Three Singles To Adventure"), Margaret Bacon ("Journey To Guyana") and, more recently, Pauline Melville ("The Ventriloquist's Tale") have discovered, they make for good reading.

If Waugh is flawed in his approach, it is only that his unremitting negativity makes the reader wonder why he ever went there at all. Indeed, I am sure that Waugh asked himself the same question almost every day: it is significant that he chose to entitle his book after the duration of his visit, almost as if he was counting off every hour like beads on a rosary. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Waugh professed to dislike his five travel books so intensely later in life that he asked they never be republished. And, with the exception of the compilation of excerpts "When The Going Was Good", they never were. Maybe he came to see his cynicism as a sin which for which subsequently he wished to atone in some manner. Thankfully his estate have been his confessors and allowed us, in their absolution, a singular glimpse into a rare country and a rare mind.

Very funny but very unsympathetic. Waugh just likes to see bad things happen to people. Still, his stories are fascinating, strange and really cool in an Oxford sort of way. A must have for every one who likes Oscar Wilde

Evelyn Waugh is the author of my favorite book, "Decline and Fall" and I am also extremely positive about most of his other novels. This volume would have been better named the Complete Short Fiction as it is more a study of starts, new endings, periods, etc. and some short stories. This must be part of a Waugh-obsessed person's library, and I consider myself one of that distinction. ... This collection is like a lost treasure map for his familiars. It includes a story which can only be an attempt to subvert a considerable anti-semetic theme in his work. It provides a time and place coincidental with the failure of his marriage that his fictional marriages carry sinister, if comedic overtones. He even wrote self-parody, in the characters that were bloated boors, alchohol reddened old men, undeniably like himself.

Frankly, I can't imagine a world without the old impossibly wicked, toad. ... He was gallingly honest when it came to intolerance for silly, selfish theater of human beings. He skewered irresistably, an African royal celebration desperately trying to seem European. And the book adds to his best known cruelty toward the champagne swilling beautiful young things, lacking in the most basic human instincts, especially towards children, passion for others or ideals. (He was not considered a loving parent, by any means.)
These are great boons to those of us who want more, having been through everything else so often. Waugh's work is shocking and hilarious. I only wish he could return briefly and leave us something on the politically correct. But as that will surely not come to pass, I must say, that this volume is a great footnote, to the god of caustic disdain, to be read in bits and pieces- forever.

I enjoyed this collection of Waugh's short stories and unfinished work. Cutting, indeed cruel at times, but always interesting, he zeroes in on the upper and upper middle classes of the interwar years. Cruelty can, in fact, be rather fun! I would say that if you haven't read any Waugh, this is a good starting point.

John Courteney Boot is a rising young British novelist, but after an affair gone sour he wants to get out of England for awhile. He approaches the well-connected Mrs. Algernon Stitch for assistance & she in turn recommends to Lord Copper, publisher of the Beast newspaper, that he send Boot to cover the war in Ishmaelia, Africa. Copper in turn orders Mr. Salter, his Foreign Editor, to get Boot and in short order a series of mix-ups leads to the Beast sending William Boot, their nature columnist and a man who loathes leaving his ancestral home, Boot Magna Hall, to Africa. In Ishmaelia, Boot stumbles into a couple of scoops and returns home a hero, "Boot of the Beast".

Evelyn Waugh is one of the great satirists of the century and he has never been funnier than he is here, skewering the Press.

GRADE: B+

In October 1935, Italy invaded the independent African nation of Ethiopia. The Italo-Ethiopian War lasted less than eight months, Emperor Haile Selassie's kingdom falling quickly before Italy's modern weaponry. It was a little war that, nonetheless, implicated the great powers of Europe and foreshadowed the much bigger war to follow.

Evelyn Waugh was in his early 30s, already the author of four remarkable comic novels, when he accepted an assignment to cover the Italo-Ethiopian War for a London newspaper. The enduring result of that assignment was Waugh's fifth novel, "Scoop," a scathing satirical assault on the ethos of Fleet Street and its war correspondents, as well as on Waugh's usual suspects, the British upper classes.

The time is the 1930s. There is a civil war in the obscure country of Ishmaelia and Lord Copper, the publisher of the Beast newspaper, a newspaper that "stands for strong, mutually antagonistic governments everywhere," believes coverage of the war is imperative:

"I am in consultation with my editors on the subject. We think it a very promising little war. A microcosm you might say of world drama. We propose to give it fullest publicity. We shall have our naval, military and air experts, our squad of photographers, our colour reporters, covering the war from every angle and on every front."

Through the influence of Mrs. Algernon Stitch, Lord Copper soon identifies John Courteney Booth, a best selling popular author, as the right man to cover the war in Ishmaelia. Neither Lord Copper nor his inscrutable editorial staff, however, is especially well read or familiar with the current socially respectable literati. Amidst the confusion, Mr. Salter, the foreign editor, mistakenly identifies William Booth, country bumpkin and staff writer for the Beast, as the "Booth" to whom Lord Copper was referring:

"At the back of the paper, ignominiously sandwiched between Pip and Pop, the Bedtime Pets, and the recipe for a dish named 'Waffle Scramble,' lay the bi-weekly column devoted to nature: --

Lush Places. Edited by William Boot, Countryman.

" 'Do you suppose that's the right one?' "

" 'Sure of it. The Prime Minister is nuts on rural England.' "

" 'He's supposed to have a particularly high-class style: 'Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole' . . . would that be it?' "

" 'Yes,' said the Managing Editor. That must be good style. At least it doesn't sound like anything else to me.' "

Thus, William Boot, Countryman, soon finds himself on his way to Ishmaelia to cover the civil war for the Beast. Boot hooks up with an experienced wire reporter named Corker along the way. Corker teachers Boot the ins and outs of covering the war, a war in which reportage comes from little more than the imagination of the journalists sent to cover it and the editorial policies of their papers. The real nature of the war correspondent's profession is suggested when Boot and Corker go to the Ishmaelia Press Bureau to obtain their credentials: "Dr. Benito, the director, was away but his clerk entered their names in his ledger and gave them cards of identity. They were small orange documents, originally printed for the registration of prostitutes. The space for thumb-print was now filled with a passport photograph and at the head the word 'journalist' substituted in neat Ishmaelite characters."

Boot, despite his naivety and ignorance of the war correspondent's trade, inadvertently succeeds in trumping his more experienced journalistic competitors in reporting the war. Along the way, his adventures in Ishmaelia provide the perfect Waugh vehicle for a satiric dissection of the journalistic trade and of what passes as governance in the less developed parts of the world, where tribalism and nepotism more often than not underlie the veneer of ostensibly functioning political systems.

Boot, of course, returns to England, where he is now a household name. But one Boot is just as good as another, or so it seems. In the confusion of Boots, William, the real war correspondent, thankfully returns to his country home while his doddering, half-senile Uncle Theodore fulfills his role as the center of attention at the Beast and the prominent author John Courteney Booth (the man who started all this) mistakenly ends up with a knighthood intended for William.

"Scoop" is another brilliant Waugh comic send-up based on real-life experience, in this case his experience as a war correspondent in Ethiopia. It also is one of his best works, a little comic novel that will keep you in stitches from beginning to end.

A lot of books complain about the world, but here's a book that knows that there's a difference between what actually goes on in the world and what gets reported as news, and that the news is only as good as the people that report it. Inspired by his own experience as a foreign correspondent, Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop" is partly a satire of journalism, partly a spy story with a well-crafted plot, and totally a masterpiece of comic writing.

Civil war is brewing in a fictitious African country called Ishmaelia. In England, a successful novelist named John Courteney Boot would like to be sent there as a foreign correspondent/spy, so he gets a friend to pull some strings with the owner of a London newspaper called the Beast, a paper which "stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments everywhere." The paper's owner, Lord Copper, has never heard of Boot, but accedes to the request and has his Foreign Editor, Mr. Salter, set up the engagement. Salter mistakenly taps John's less famous, less talented cousin William Boot, who writes a dippy nature column for the Beast, to be the foreign correspondent in Ishmaelia. So off William goes, a large assortment of emergency equipment for the tropics in tow, including a collapsible canoe.

When William gets to Ishmaelia, he encounters several journalists from newspapers all over the world who also are looking for the big scoop on the war. The problem is that nobody knows what's going on, as there is no palpable unrest, and the country's government is an institution of buffoonery. The events in Ishmaelia are reminiscent of the circus-like atmosphere of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." While the rest of the journalists take off to the country's interior on a red herring, William stays behind in the capital and meets a man who is at the center of the country's political intrigue and lets William in on exclusive information. William manages to turn in the big story and becomes a journalistic hero back in England.

Lovers of good prose will find much to savor in "Scoop"; practically every sentence is a gem of dry British wit. Waugh is comparable with P.G. Wodehouse in his flair for comic invention, and indeed William Boot is a protagonist worthy of Wodehouse -- a hapless but likeable dim bulb who triumphs through dumb luck.