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Selina Hastings
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Evelyn Waugh Hardcover – Import, October 6, 1998

by Selina Hastings (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 35 ratings
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This biography of Evelyn Waugh, written with the full co-operation of the family and making use of a mass of unpublished letters and diaries, traces the remarkable career of a writer who, though respected, was always controversial and undoubtedly eccentric. In particular, it sheds new light on his difficult relationship with his father, his homosexual affair at Oxford, his unhappy first marriage to Evelyn Gardner, and his years of sexual adventure before his second marriage.
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  1. Print length
    733 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Random House UK
  4. Publication date
    October 6, 1998
  5. ISBN-10
    1856192237
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1856192231
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Her style is supremely elegant and her eye for detail brings dazzle and wit to every page… This is a monumental book.” - Independent on Sunday

“Evelyn Waugh was the most complicated of men… It is the first great virtue of Selina Hastings’s splendid biography that she never forgets it. Consequently she has written a sympathetic and highly intelligent book which also - rarity of rarities these days - reads rapidly. It is sympathetic also because, like Waugh himself, the author adores gossip.” – Daily Telegraph

“Evelyn Waugh was one of the funniest writers in the language. Selina Hastings’s book is alive with his humour.” – Sunday Express

“Be assured that you would be unlikely to find a more entertaining, delightful or rewarding book on Waugh if you were to search… for the next twenty years. The narrative is at once gripping and thoughtful on every page.” – Mail On Sunday


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Selina Hastings is a writer and literary journalist. She worked for fourteen years at the Daily Telegraph and subsequently as literary editor at Harper’s & Queen.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House UK; First Edition (October 6, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 733 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1856192237
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1856192231
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.5 pounds
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 35 ratings

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Selina Hastings

Selina Hastings

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
35 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

reading man
5.0 out of 5 stars Skunk Works
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2014
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A great biography of a great writer and a great snob and misanthrope.

It amazes me that two of the greatest prose stylists in English fiction of the 20th century, Waugh and V.S. Naipaul, were miserable rotters, albeit of different types. Interesting too that before Waugh died in 1966, he admired what he was able to read by Naipaul, though he used the "n" word in reference to him. I'm sure Naipaul admired Waugh's writing, but unfortunately I haven't found any references to his person in Naipaul's books. I'm certain he would have returned the compliment with a well-chosen epithet.

If you ever needed proof that being able to write with genius doesn't require having an admirable character, read this biography and/or Phillip French's authorized bio of Naipaul. Two swine with too much talent, but life isn't fair, yes?
6 people found this helpful
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Tom Lee
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent biography
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2013
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For those with a love for Waugh, Hastings work offers a wonderful insight into his world and his work. Excellent.
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treasure island
4.0 out of 5 stars evelyn waugh
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2013
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selena hastings,is a great biographer,very well researched and finely writen with passion and feeling,an inside look into the history of the last century.
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J. William H. Hudgins
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2016
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Fine author, great biography and subject!
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LizaJane
3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant writer, awful man:. a connection?
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2016
Brilliant writer, awful man

Do nice guys create great art? Perhaps not, at least in the realm of literature. The kind of intensely high standards in art that someone like Waugh had doesn't make for a mellow personality. Novels express so much of who an artist is, and reading Black Mischief (in my view Waugh's best book) tells us that the author lived in a very cruel world.

The main problem with this biography for me is that it gives Waugh a pass when it comes to his religion. After reading it I looked at other titles by the same author and inferred that she also was Catholic, and so able to accept without question Waugh's hard to excuse reactionary views. A glaring example: in Sword of Honor, Guy's father is presented as something close to a saint. When his grandson is captured by the Germans his response is to regret that he hadn't been killed in action, since prisoners of war are exposed to so much temptation. What?
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Harry Eagar
4.0 out of 5 stars Supreme talent ruined by snobbery and religion
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2012
Evelyn Waugh was the leading example during the past century of the supremely talented artist with nothing to say.

Selina Hastings' beautiful biography is the more powerful for never coming right out and saying so. Writing of his school days, she says, "At heart conventional, he accepted tradition and authority while at the same time making it clear that he accepted them very much on his own terms."

This is true enough in its way, but it requires a great deal of explication. Waugh after his conversion to Roman Catholicism presented himself as a defender of the early and unspoilt church, which, besides the fact that it never was unspoilt, did not itself accept Waugh's outre views. His view of sainthood, for example, was akin to that of a Sicilian peasant but not at all close to the views of his Jesuit teachers at Farm Street.

Since he was one of the finest stylists in English prose of his age (I used to think he was the finest but now class him as one of several rare talents along with T.H. White, Robert Coover and Julian Rathbone), the English church, still fighting to overturn the Protestant revolution, would have very much liked to have recruited him; and for his part, Waugh wanted to be recruited, but he was too strange and abrasive to make the cut. He wrote extensively for partisan magazines but more as freak than seer.

Even before his Catholicism, his acceptance of traditional mores was erratic. His homosexual affairs at school and college were hardly traditional to the chapel teachings of his beloved nanny nor of the the conventional Edwardian manners of his father, least radical of English bookmen. On the other hand, his love life could be considered as traditional for upper class English boys and even more so of English classicists, but Waugh was no classicist. His tastes ran toward Gothic.

Hastings sets all this out in interminable detail. For a while, I wondered if Waugh was ever going to get out of public school. But when he does, things speed up.

But here is the only real deficiency in this admirable biography. We do not care about Waugh as a thinker; he had no thoughts that a civilized person in the 21st century would care about; nor as a social critic, because while his satires are still wildly funny, they lack serious bite.

We read him, as he recognized at age 17 when he earned his scholarship at Oxford for "my English style," for his unsurpassed skill with words.

Hastings does not suggest where this came from. As quotations from his letters and journal show, at age 11 or 12 he was practically illiterate; but by age 16 his style was mature.

In those years, he was bent on studying graphic arts and we learn a great deal about that. But who influenced his prose style remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma inside a conundrum.

Then follow several hundred pages of lurid gossip as Waugh makes his way into the least serious ranks of the upper crust, followed by more hundreds of much less salacious doings after he got religion.

If he ever encountered a saint, it was his second wife, who unaccountably put up with him. After his death, she sold his papers to Americans who published them. She was distressed to think that people would think she had been married to a monster. But she had been.

In the end, it is impossible to take Waugh seriously. The moral sexual dilemma of Guy Crouchback that he spent years and hundreds of pages developing is so trivial that it leaves anyone but a Catholic of Pius IX stripe baffled.

One of the American editors, I forget whether it was the editor of the letters or of the diaries, said Waugh died young (63) from boredom. I believe it.
3 people found this helpful
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David Schweizer
4.0 out of 5 stars Jitterbug Blues
Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2007
The between-the-wars generation had it tough. They missed the slaughter in the trenches, were too old for the Marxism of the 30s, and never had it quite so good as their school days at Eton and Oxford. It was a generation consumed by nostalgia. They also had 19th century educations which did little to prepare them for the bleak post-war welfare state. They hated the angry young men of the 1950s, but never could form a coherent enough reaction to be called the angry old men. That would certainly have fit Evelyn Waugh. Cranky, brilliant, and so it has been said, hilarious, Waugh was a kind of literary W.C. Fields. This bio does a very good job, it seems to me, of introducing the author to general readers. Hastings writes well, and tells all without being unseemly or too personal, or too prudishly 'politically correct' as many contemporary biographers have become. There are other one-volume books out on Waugh but this one stands out for its graceful prose.
11 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

John Davison
5.0 out of 5 stars Pure pleasure
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2010
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I am reading this book for the second time, and have been trying to work out why reading Selina Hastings is such unalloyed pleasure.

I got a clearer idea when I picked up a book by another writer I had ordered and skimmed a few pages, only to be hit by a familiar weariness.

Too many writers in English fall into one of two categories: their style is too academic or too informal. In both situations the reader is aware of the writer as an uncomfortable presence.

Selina Hastings' writing is absolutely clear: she never uses a difficult word when a simple one will do the job better; it is absolutely graceful: she is incapable of either pretentiousness or vulgarity; she is sometimes laugh-aloud funny, and she is always amusing.

One of her great gifts is to present a short account of each of Waugh's books which such economy and clarity that she arouses one's interest whether one knows the book inside out or has never read it.

Above all, and what a relief this is, she is non-judgmental. She presents her subjects exactly as she finds them, and yet manages to make them lovable. This is particularly useful here, because, as she states in the opening chapter:

"The reputation of Evelyn Waugh rests on two premises: that he was one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century, and that as a man he was a monster."
9 people found this helpful
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Stephen Bentley
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Effort.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2019
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Firmly nails down the personal story. Which for me is very entertaining, very sad and also very interesting. There's a lot of reading, but it is very interesting reading.
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Margherita Macchini
5.0 out of 5 stars He visits the mansions of the great English aristocratic families
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 28, 2015
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Selina Hastings has conceived a biography which is also a vivid portrait of the Bright Young People. She blends historical accuracy and insight into her object so well that the reader feels he is being taken on board this incredibly rich journey. He visits the mansions of the great English aristocratic families, goes to parties along with Waugh and his friends, embarks on a cruise with the Catholic intelligentia, lives his hectic university years with him and experiences his doubts as to which career to embark on. The reader travels around the world with him and goes through the composition of every single work he wrote. A wonderful tour de force.
4 people found this helpful
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jenny Cee
3.0 out of 5 stars i tried to send this back
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2013
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Haven't read this yet as I returned it, but I have read reviews which say it was really, really funny
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HK
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic SERENA Hastings
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2013
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I have read most of Evelyn Waugh, including biographies. Although this book wa published some years ago it is as fresh as when first written. I bought it on the back of her excellent biography on Somerset Maugham. Both had a cynical view of people and both had powers of acute observation. Difficult to guess who will be her next subject, Christopher Hitchens perhaps?
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