Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead
Paula Byrne

A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, ‘Brideshead Revisited’.Evelyn Waugh was already famous when ‘Brideshead Revisited’ was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no ‘immediate propaganda value’. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith – an elegy, in many ways, for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier.The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts in ‘Brideshead Revisited’. In this engrossing biography, Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through those friendships that mattered most to him. Far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, she uncovers a man as loving and complex as the family that inspired him – a family deeply traumatised when their father was revealed as a homosexual and forced to flee the country.This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name.

PAULA BYRNE

Mad World

Evelyn Waugh and the

Secrets of Brideshead

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_29b9aa12-cae8-5b67-b2c3-eec0bf2bbef0)

Harper Press

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This HarperPress paperback edition published 2010

First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2009

Copyright © Paula Byrne 2009

PS Section copyright © Sarah O’Reilly 2010, except ‘Other Worlds’ by Paula Byrne © Paula Byrne 2010

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Paula Byrne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007243778

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007455478

Version: 2016-09-22

Contents

Cover (#ue8d62992-b449-5ff7-8a5d-5f4e2d3e4acb)

Title Page (#ua20e421d-3fcb-53fe-83f4-753e155158fb)

Copyright (#u5249eaa2-684a-5811-9566-7cfd29cc5ef9)

Prologue (#u248fd80a-63ed-5dfb-81a5-57fed9321994)

Chapter 1: A Tale of Two Childhoods (#u4ce872a2-4fc9-536a-9d01-f674db7e16b4)

Chapter 2: Lancing versus Eton (#uf68f0f23-01cb-5cea-b304-8fe371992ed6)

Chapter 3: Oxford: ‘… her secret none can utter’ (#u46e0bfa7-2ddb-570d-a0c7-b5e13525cdc3)

Chapter 4: The Scarlet Woman (#u0a66017b-82eb-5f8c-bd9e-8a9fa61d3724)

Chapter 5: In the Balance (#u735b494a-ebfd-5db5-ae15-00161dcc0496)

Chapter 6: The Lygon Heritage (#u04d0e5b2-9135-58f9-a332-81ef9252baa8)

Chapter 7: Untoward Incidents (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8: Bright Young Things (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9: The Busting of Boom (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10: Madresfield Visited (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11: The Beauchamp Belles (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12: Christmas at Mad (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13: An Encounter in Rome (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14: Up the Amazon (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15: A Gothic Man (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16: Fiasco in the Arctic (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17: Ladies and Lapdogs (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18: A Year of Departures (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19: Three Weddings and a Funeral (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20: Waugh’s War (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21: The Door to Brideshead (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22: Brideshead Unlocked (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)