WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.960 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We have a stack 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:06.879 of research on the desk today that is, quite 00:00:06.879 --> 00:00:09.720 frankly, difficult to categorize. It really is. 00:00:09.839 --> 00:00:12.199 We are looking at a man who, I mean, he spent 00:00:12.199 --> 00:00:15.500 his entire life building a fortress around himself. 00:00:15.740 --> 00:00:20.019 A fortress made of tweed, cigar smoke, and some 00:00:20.019 --> 00:00:22.300 of the most lethal wit in the English day. We 00:00:22.300 --> 00:00:24.780 are talking about Evelyn Waugh. Yeah. And if 00:00:24.780 --> 00:00:27.170 you know the name... you probably have a very, 00:00:27.210 --> 00:00:29.530 very specific image in your head. Oh, I'm sure. 00:00:29.710 --> 00:00:32.729 You're likely picturing the crusty colonel, the 00:00:32.729 --> 00:00:34.969 older Wa. Right. The man who looked like an angry 00:00:34.969 --> 00:00:37.609 bullfrog in a three -piece suit, who, you know, 00:00:37.609 --> 00:00:40.170 hated the Beatles, hated plastic, refused to 00:00:40.170 --> 00:00:42.380 drive a car. And treated the telephone like it 00:00:42.380 --> 00:00:44.780 was an instrument of torture devised by the devil. 00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:47.219 Exactly. That is the caricature. Absolutely. 00:00:47.380 --> 00:00:49.859 The grand old man of letters who just seemed 00:00:49.859 --> 00:00:52.799 to exist solely to grumble about the decline 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:54.820 of Western civilization. But the fascinating 00:00:54.820 --> 00:00:56.640 thing about this deep dive, and I think the reason 00:00:56.640 --> 00:00:59.060 you're going to be surprised, is that this persona, 00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:02.880 it wasn't who he really was. Or at least it wasn't 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:05.239 who he started out as. That's the hook for me. 00:01:05.340 --> 00:01:08.099 It really is. Because when you dig into the biography. 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:11.359 You don't find a conservative curmudgeon in the 00:01:11.359 --> 00:01:13.519 beginning. Not at all. No. You find a rebel. 00:01:13.659 --> 00:01:17.599 You find a heavy drinking, sexually fluid, wild 00:01:17.599 --> 00:01:21.340 bohemian running around 1920s London with the 00:01:21.340 --> 00:01:23.540 bright young things. It's almost like looking 00:01:23.540 --> 00:01:25.819 at two different people. It really is. So how 00:01:25.819 --> 00:01:28.609 does that happen? Well, it creates this central 00:01:28.609 --> 00:01:31.349 tension that runs through his entire life. On 00:01:31.349 --> 00:01:34.349 one hand, you have the prose stylist, widely 00:01:34.349 --> 00:01:36.689 considered one of the greatest writers of the 00:01:36.689 --> 00:01:39.349 20th century. I mean, a man capable of writing 00:01:39.349 --> 00:01:43.489 English sentences that are so elegant, so precise, 00:01:43.489 --> 00:01:46.170 and so funny that they make other writers want 00:01:46.170 --> 00:01:48.230 to just snap their pencils in half. And on the 00:01:48.230 --> 00:01:49.769 other hand? On the other hand, you have this 00:01:49.769 --> 00:01:52.689 reputation as the nastiest tempered man in England. 00:01:53.150 --> 00:01:55.849 A bully, a snob. A monster. Some people called 00:01:55.849 --> 00:01:58.170 him that. Yes, a monster. So the mission today 00:01:58.170 --> 00:02:01.170 is to bridge that gap. We need to figure out 00:02:01.170 --> 00:02:04.250 how the bullied son of a publisher transformed 00:02:04.250 --> 00:02:08.009 into this literary icon and then into the monster 00:02:08.009 --> 00:02:10.090 of his later years. We want to understand the 00:02:10.090 --> 00:02:13.469 mask. Was the nasty persona real or was it a 00:02:13.469 --> 00:02:15.689 performance art piece that just got out of hand? 00:02:15.909 --> 00:02:17.889 I think to understand the mask, you have to look 00:02:17.889 --> 00:02:19.969 at the face underneath it. And that face was 00:02:19.969 --> 00:02:23.219 formed in Hampstead, London in 1903. Let's start 00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:25.800 there. The family dynamic. Yeah. Because reading 00:02:25.800 --> 00:02:28.439 through the early biography, it feels like the 00:02:28.439 --> 00:02:31.539 script for a psychological drama. It does. Evelyn 00:02:31.539 --> 00:02:33.780 Waugh was born into a very literary household. 00:02:34.039 --> 00:02:36.840 His father, Arthur Waugh, was a publisher and 00:02:36.840 --> 00:02:39.460 a well -known critic. On paper, it sounds like 00:02:39.460 --> 00:02:41.099 the perfect environment for a budding writer. 00:02:41.379 --> 00:02:44.919 On paper, yes. In reality, it was a battlefield. 00:02:45.259 --> 00:02:48.180 There was a very specific and I'd say very painful 00:02:48.180 --> 00:02:50.759 geometry to the Waugh family. What do you mean 00:02:50.759 --> 00:02:53.379 by geometry? Well, Evelyn was incredibly close 00:02:53.379 --> 00:02:55.580 to his mother, Catherine. He was a mummy's boy 00:02:55.580 --> 00:02:57.819 in those early years. She taught him to read. 00:02:57.840 --> 00:03:00.740 She nurtured him. But he was almost completely 00:03:00.740 --> 00:03:03.439 excluded by his father. And this wasn't just 00:03:03.439 --> 00:03:05.520 a case of a distant Victorian father, was it? 00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:08.300 This was active favoritism. Oh, it was flagrant. 00:03:08.419 --> 00:03:11.360 Arthur Waugh had a profound, almost obsessive 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:14.639 bond with his elder son, Alec. Alec Waugh. Alec 00:03:14.639 --> 00:03:17.379 was five years older. He was the golden boy. 00:03:17.539 --> 00:03:19.860 He was the athlete, the cricketer, the one who 00:03:19.860 --> 00:03:23.729 could do no wrong. Arthur doted on him. Wow. 00:03:23.849 --> 00:03:25.650 And there are these heartbreaking stories of 00:03:25.650 --> 00:03:28.310 Evelyn sitting in the corner, literally watching 00:03:28.310 --> 00:03:32.389 his father fawn over Alec, feeling like a ghost 00:03:32.389 --> 00:03:35.030 in his own house. The spare to the air dynamic, 00:03:35.229 --> 00:03:37.469 but played out in a middle class drawing room. 00:03:37.659 --> 00:03:41.379 Exactly. And psychologists and literary biographers, 00:03:41.460 --> 00:03:44.740 for that matter, they point to this as the foundational 00:03:44.740 --> 00:03:47.460 trauma of Waugh's life. That feeling of exclusion. 00:03:47.780 --> 00:03:50.240 That feeling of exclusion of being the lesser 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:52.900 son, the outsider looking in. It didn't make 00:03:52.900 --> 00:03:55.139 him withdraw, though. That's the key thing. It 00:03:55.139 --> 00:03:58.479 made him pugnacious. It lit a fire. It did. He 00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:00.639 realized early on that if he couldn't be the 00:04:00.639 --> 00:04:02.560 favorite, he would be the most noticeable. He 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:04.639 had to fight for attention. So he develops this 00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:07.289 wit as a weapon. A sharp attacking wit. as a 00:04:07.289 --> 00:04:09.789 defense mechanism. Even as a child at his prep 00:04:09.789 --> 00:04:12.370 school, Heath Mount, he described himself as 00:04:12.370 --> 00:04:14.930 a clever little boy, but he also admitted, quite 00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:17.370 candidly, that he was a bully. A self -admitted 00:04:17.370 --> 00:04:20.550 bully. Yes. There's a specific anecdote about 00:04:20.550 --> 00:04:23.230 this that I love, simply for the sheer celebrity 00:04:23.230 --> 00:04:26.089 irony of it. What? He went to school with Cecil 00:04:26.089 --> 00:04:29.129 Beaton. No way. The Cecil Beaton. The future 00:04:29.129 --> 00:04:31.569 society photographer. The man who would go on 00:04:31.569 --> 00:04:33.930 to photograph the queen and define the aesthetic 00:04:33.930 --> 00:04:37.329 of the mid -20th century. And Evelyn Waugh, this 00:04:37.329 --> 00:04:40.509 small, aggressive child. Bullied him mercilessly. 00:04:40.509 --> 00:04:42.610 That's incredible. It's a clash of titans before 00:04:42.610 --> 00:04:45.370 they were titans. It is. But it shows that Waugh 00:04:45.370 --> 00:04:48.250 was already asserting dominance, using his wit 00:04:48.250 --> 00:04:50.430 and his cruelty to establish a pecking order. 00:04:51.029 --> 00:04:53.709 He was also writing, of course. Even then. Oh, 00:04:53.709 --> 00:04:56.550 yes. He wrote a story called The Curse of the 00:04:56.550 --> 00:04:59.370 Horse Race as a child. You can already see the 00:04:59.370 --> 00:05:02.310 dark humor, the cynicism bubbling up. He wasn't 00:05:02.310 --> 00:05:04.689 writing sweet stories about bunnies. No, he was 00:05:04.689 --> 00:05:07.120 writing about c - curses, and betting, but the 00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:09.699 real turning point, the moment that really solidified 00:05:09.699 --> 00:05:12.379 his status as the outsider, involved his brother 00:05:12.379 --> 00:05:14.779 Alec again. We have to talk about the Alec scandal. 00:05:14.839 --> 00:05:17.579 This sounds juicy. This is a crucial piece of 00:05:17.579 --> 00:05:21.060 context that often gets overlooked. The plan, 00:05:21.079 --> 00:05:23.579 the expectation, was that Evelyn would follow 00:05:23.579 --> 00:05:26.529 the family tradition. His father went to Sherbourne 00:05:26.529 --> 00:05:29.189 School. Alec went to Sherbourne School. So Evelyn 00:05:29.189 --> 00:05:31.410 was supposed to go to Sherbourne School. It was 00:05:31.410 --> 00:05:33.910 his birthright. And Alec blew it up. Completely. 00:05:34.189 --> 00:05:36.709 Alec was expelled from Sherbourne for a homosexual 00:05:36.709 --> 00:05:40.329 relationship. Wow. Now, in the context of British 00:05:40.329 --> 00:05:42.490 public schools at the time, this kind of thing 00:05:42.490 --> 00:05:45.149 happened. But it was usually handled with quiet 00:05:45.149 --> 00:05:47.949 discretion. You were sent home and no one spoke 00:05:47.949 --> 00:05:51.009 of it. Alec Waugh did not do discretion. He wrote 00:05:51.009 --> 00:05:52.730 a book about it. He wrote a book about it. The 00:05:52.730 --> 00:05:55.360 Loom of Youth. He wrote it while waiting for 00:05:55.360 --> 00:05:57.819 his military commission, and it was a sensation, 00:05:58.120 --> 00:06:00.959 a bestseller. What was in it? It exposed the 00:06:00.959 --> 00:06:03.399 reality of public school life, the cruelty, the 00:06:03.399 --> 00:06:06.199 sports obsession, and yes, the romantic friendships 00:06:06.199 --> 00:06:09.480 between boys. It was scandalously explicit for 00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:11.300 the time. And the fallout for the family was 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:13.839 nuclear. The headmaster of Sherbourne was so 00:06:13.839 --> 00:06:16.600 offended that he basically blacklisted the entire 00:06:16.600 --> 00:06:20.060 Waugh family. He told Arthur Waugh that no son 00:06:20.060 --> 00:06:22.579 of his would ever be welcome at Sherbourne again. 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:24.860 So Evelyn is punished for his brother's sins. 00:06:25.180 --> 00:06:27.740 He was collateral damage. He was forced to go 00:06:27.740 --> 00:06:29.779 to Lansing College instead. And Lansing was? 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:33.740 Lansing is a perfectly fine school, but in Evelyn's 00:06:33.740 --> 00:06:36.439 mind, in that class -obsessed, hierarchy -obsessed 00:06:36.439 --> 00:06:40.620 mind, It was inferior. It was second rate. He 00:06:40.620 --> 00:06:43.339 felt he had been downgraded. It was a humiliation 00:06:43.339 --> 00:06:45.579 that he blamed on his father and his brother 00:06:45.579 --> 00:06:47.899 for the rest of his life. But this is where we 00:06:47.899 --> 00:06:51.040 see the pattern that defines his life. When he's 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:53.839 put in a situation he hates, he doesn't just 00:06:53.839 --> 00:06:56.930 endure it. He subverts it. He absolutely does. 00:06:57.069 --> 00:06:59.449 He arrives at Lansing and instead of trying to 00:06:59.449 --> 00:07:01.509 fit in with the sporty types, he goes the complete 00:07:01.509 --> 00:07:03.850 opposite direction. He creates a counterculture. 00:07:04.050 --> 00:07:05.970 He becomes an esthete. He becomes an esthete. 00:07:06.029 --> 00:07:07.970 He mocks the school's cadet corps, which was 00:07:07.970 --> 00:07:10.569 taken very seriously during the war years. And 00:07:10.569 --> 00:07:13.009 he founds a club. And the name of this club is 00:07:13.009 --> 00:07:16.290 just, it's pure Evelyn Waugh. The Corpse Club. 00:07:16.449 --> 00:07:18.529 The Corpse Club. I love that. And the membership 00:07:18.529 --> 00:07:20.730 requirement was that you had to be board stiff. 00:07:21.149 --> 00:07:24.730 That is fantastic. It's so teenage, so angsty, 00:07:24.769 --> 00:07:28.189 but also genuinely funny. It is. It's performance 00:07:28.189 --> 00:07:30.769 art. He's taking his boredom and his disdain 00:07:30.769 --> 00:07:33.050 and turning it into a badge of honor. And he 00:07:33.050 --> 00:07:35.550 also loses his faith around this time. He sheds 00:07:35.550 --> 00:07:37.709 his religious beliefs completely. He went into 00:07:37.709 --> 00:07:40.389 Lansing as a boy with a vague faith and came 00:07:40.389 --> 00:07:43.170 out a devout atheist. He wanted to shock. He 00:07:43.170 --> 00:07:45.290 wanted to be the smartest, most cynical person 00:07:45.290 --> 00:07:47.310 in the room. But he survives Lansing, he gets 00:07:47.310 --> 00:07:50.079 the grades, and he heads to Oxford. Hertford 00:07:50.079 --> 00:07:53.639 College, 1922. Right. And this is the era we 00:07:53.639 --> 00:07:56.379 associate with Brideshead Revisited. But the 00:07:56.379 --> 00:07:59.579 reality of Woz Oxford wasn't initially the champagne 00:07:59.579 --> 00:08:02.019 -soaked nostalgia trip we might expect. No, not 00:08:02.019 --> 00:08:04.379 at all. He started off trying to be a serious 00:08:04.379 --> 00:08:06.920 student. He smoked a pipe, he rode a bicycle, 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:09.279 he spoke at the Oxford Union debates on political 00:08:09.279 --> 00:08:11.439 history. He's trying to be the good student. 00:08:11.579 --> 00:08:13.939 The good student his father wanted. But then, 00:08:13.980 --> 00:08:17.259 the bright young people arrived. The influencers 00:08:17.259 --> 00:08:20.629 of the 1920s. Exactly. Pictures like Harold Acton 00:08:20.629 --> 00:08:23.870 and Brian Howard. These were Etonians. They were 00:08:23.870 --> 00:08:26.290 wealthy. They were sophisticated. They wore makeup. 00:08:26.529 --> 00:08:29.069 They recited poetry through megaphones. They 00:08:29.069 --> 00:08:31.889 were avant -garde and aggressively modern. And 00:08:31.889 --> 00:08:34.029 Waugh was drawn to that. It was mesmerized by 00:08:34.029 --> 00:08:36.110 them. And he didn't just watch them. He joined 00:08:36.110 --> 00:08:38.529 them. He dove in headfirst. He became the secretary 00:08:38.529 --> 00:08:40.649 of the Hypocrites Club. The Hypocrites Club. 00:08:40.789 --> 00:08:43.870 The names are just perfect. Again, the name tells 00:08:43.870 --> 00:08:46.929 you everything. The Hypocrites Club was the epicenter 00:08:46.929 --> 00:08:50.740 of the bad crowd. It was artistic, socially fluid, 00:08:50.840 --> 00:08:53.919 and sexually fluid. Waugh later wrote that this 00:08:53.919 --> 00:08:57.259 club was the stamping ground of half my Oxford 00:08:57.259 --> 00:09:00.220 life. When we say sexually fluid, we should be 00:09:00.220 --> 00:09:03.259 specific. This was a period of intense experimentation 00:09:03.259 --> 00:09:06.509 for him. It was. He embarked on several homosexual 00:09:06.509 --> 00:09:09.149 relationships. The sources highlight Richard 00:09:09.149 --> 00:09:12.350 Pears and, most significantly, a man named Alistair 00:09:12.350 --> 00:09:14.970 Graham. Alistair Graham. That name is important, 00:09:15.149 --> 00:09:17.309 isn't it? It's a name that literary detectives 00:09:17.309 --> 00:09:19.950 always circle because he's a prototype. He is 00:09:19.950 --> 00:09:22.169 widely considered the primary inspiration for 00:09:22.169 --> 00:09:24.789 Sebastian Flight in Brideshead Revisited. So 00:09:24.789 --> 00:09:27.730 beautiful, aristocratic. Charming and doomed. 00:09:28.379 --> 00:09:31.019 Waugh was infatuated with him. This wasn't just 00:09:31.019 --> 00:09:33.159 experimentation for him. It was deep emotional 00:09:33.159 --> 00:09:35.600 attachment. But while he's having this intense 00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:39.360 social and romantic life, his academic life is 00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:42.919 just... imploding he completely stopped working 00:09:42.919 --> 00:09:45.460 he spent all his money on clothes and alcohol 00:09:45.460 --> 00:09:49.019 and this led to a feud that is honestly one of 00:09:49.019 --> 00:09:51.860 the funniest and most petty chapters in literary 00:09:51.860 --> 00:09:54.399 history oh is this a tutor the feud with his 00:09:54.399 --> 00:09:57.759 history tutor crmf crutwell we have to unpack 00:09:57.759 --> 00:10:00.240 the crutwell feud because most people if they 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:02.419 don't like a teacher they complain to their friends 00:10:02.419 --> 00:10:05.830 and then move on Waugh did not move on. No. Crutwell 00:10:05.830 --> 00:10:09.049 was a serious academic. He saw Waugh as a wasted 00:10:09.049 --> 00:10:11.750 talent, a drunk, and a nuisance. He tried to 00:10:11.750 --> 00:10:13.970 advise Waugh to pull himself together, and Waugh 00:10:13.970 --> 00:10:17.190 responded with what he later called fatuous haughtiness. 00:10:17.470 --> 00:10:19.830 So they despised each other. They did. But Waugh 00:10:19.830 --> 00:10:22.370 played the long game. The very long game. For 00:10:22.370 --> 00:10:24.570 the rest of his writing career, I mean decades 00:10:24.570 --> 00:10:27.330 later, whenever Waugh needed a name for a truly 00:10:27.330 --> 00:10:30.549 detestable, odious character, he named them Crutwell. 00:10:30.750 --> 00:10:33.000 Give us some examples. I need to hear this. Okay. 00:10:33.179 --> 00:10:38.200 In his novels, the name Cretwell appears as a 00:10:38.200 --> 00:10:41.500 burglar, a fake tan salesman, a fake tan salesman, 00:10:41.539 --> 00:10:44.820 a homicidal maniac, even a minor character who 00:10:44.820 --> 00:10:48.059 exists solely to be humiliated in some way. It 00:10:48.059 --> 00:10:50.259 was this running joke that only Waugh and his 00:10:50.259 --> 00:10:52.620 friends really got, but it was his way of getting 00:10:52.620 --> 00:10:55.120 the last laugh over and over again. The level 00:10:55.120 --> 00:10:57.480 of grudge holding is almost admirable. It's a 00:10:57.480 --> 00:10:59.759 commitment. It really is. But the grudge didn't 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:02.909 save his degree. No. The partying caught up with 00:11:02.909 --> 00:11:05.230 him. He received a third class degree, which 00:11:05.230 --> 00:11:08.110 was a disaster for a scholarship boy. He lost 00:11:08.110 --> 00:11:10.250 his funding. He couldn't return for his final 00:11:10.250 --> 00:11:13.289 term. He left Oxford in disgrace. No degrees. 00:11:13.490 --> 00:11:16.129 No degree. Mountains of debt and absolutely no 00:11:16.129 --> 00:11:18.309 prospects. In his mental state at this point, 00:11:18.350 --> 00:11:21.279 what was that like? Fragile. Extremely fragile. 00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:23.440 His letters from this time talk about severe 00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:26.299 emotional pressures and feeling nearly insane. 00:11:26.539 --> 00:11:28.639 He felt he had completely blown his chance at 00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:30.519 life. This ushers in what you'd call the lost 00:11:30.519 --> 00:11:33.419 years, right? The mid -1920s. Exactly. He's bouncing 00:11:33.419 --> 00:11:35.500 around trying to find a footing. He tries art 00:11:35.500 --> 00:11:37.940 school fails. He takes a series of teaching jobs 00:11:37.940 --> 00:11:40.980 in terrible schools. Hates them. And gets fired 00:11:40.980 --> 00:11:43.639 from one in spectacular fashion, I read. Oh, 00:11:43.639 --> 00:11:46.620 yes. He was dismissed from a teaching post at 00:11:46.620 --> 00:11:49.899 a place called Aston Clinton for the attempted 00:11:49.899 --> 00:11:53.559 drunken seduction of a school matron. You can't 00:11:53.559 --> 00:11:55.360 make this stuff up. It sounds like a scene from 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:58.019 one of his later novels. It's pure slapstick, 00:11:58.039 --> 00:12:00.940 but with a really dark undercurrent. And that 00:12:00.940 --> 00:12:04.860 darkness bottoms out in 1925. This is the jellyfish 00:12:04.860 --> 00:12:07.039 incident. Okay. This is the story I was waiting 00:12:07.039 --> 00:12:09.700 for. This is the moment where tragedy and comedy 00:12:09.700 --> 00:12:13.039 collide perfectly. Wah is depressed. He feels 00:12:13.039 --> 00:12:15.279 like a complete failure. He decides to commit 00:12:15.279 --> 00:12:17.360 suicide. So walk us through the scene. Where 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:19.759 is he? He goes down to the beach near his school. 00:12:19.960 --> 00:12:22.159 He leaves a suicide note with his clothes on 00:12:22.159 --> 00:12:24.700 the sand, like something out of a Victorian melodrama. 00:12:24.879 --> 00:12:27.879 Very dramatic. And he walks into the water and 00:12:27.879 --> 00:12:30.559 begins to swim out to sea, fully intending to 00:12:30.559 --> 00:12:33.539 drown himself. He's ready to die, and then he 00:12:33.539 --> 00:12:36.480 gets stung by a jellyfish. A jellyfish. A jellyfish. 00:12:36.559 --> 00:12:39.580 The pain was sharp and immediate, and being Evelyn 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:42.399 Waugh, a man who hated discomfort even more than 00:12:42.399 --> 00:12:44.759 he hated life at that moment, he decided that 00:12:44.759 --> 00:12:47.250 being stung was simply too unpleasant. So the 00:12:47.250 --> 00:12:49.769 sting snapped him out of it. Completely. It broke 00:12:49.769 --> 00:12:52.409 the trance. He turned around, swam back to shore, 00:12:52.549 --> 00:12:55.129 put his clothes on, and tore up the note. It's 00:12:55.129 --> 00:12:57.889 incredible. The sheer absurdity of it saved him. 00:12:58.090 --> 00:13:00.590 If it had been a shark, he might be a tragic 00:13:00.590 --> 00:13:03.309 figure. But a jellyfish makes it a funny story. 00:13:03.629 --> 00:13:06.570 It's the perfect Waugh anecdote. It undercuts 00:13:06.570 --> 00:13:09.070 the romance of suicide with the stinging reality 00:13:09.070 --> 00:13:11.429 of nature. He couldn't even kill himself without 00:13:11.429 --> 00:13:14.799 it turning into a farce. So he survives. And 00:13:14.799 --> 00:13:16.620 shortly after this, things seem to stabilize 00:13:16.620 --> 00:13:19.659 a bit. He meets a woman, Evelyn Gardner. Yes. 00:13:19.980 --> 00:13:22.360 And because her name was Evelyn and his name 00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:25.240 was Evelyn, their circle, which, you know, loved 00:13:25.240 --> 00:13:28.159 a good joke, called them he Evelyn and she Evelyn. 00:13:28.220 --> 00:13:30.220 That's cute. But the foundations were rotten 00:13:30.220 --> 00:13:32.169 from the start, weren't they? They were. They 00:13:32.169 --> 00:13:34.629 married in 1928, but it was against her family's 00:13:34.629 --> 00:13:37.330 wishes. Her mother, Lady Burclare, thought Waugh 00:13:37.330 --> 00:13:39.309 was bad news. And looking at his resume at the 00:13:39.309 --> 00:13:42.230 time. She wasn't wrong. Failed degree, debts, 00:13:42.470 --> 00:13:45.110 the drinking. She said he lacked moral fiber. 00:13:45.389 --> 00:13:47.889 But professionally, this is the moment he breaks 00:13:47.889 --> 00:13:50.230 through, isn't it? He publishes Decline and Fall. 00:13:50.509 --> 00:13:55.299 Yes. 1928. It's an instant classic. It's hilarious. 00:13:55.519 --> 00:13:58.220 It's biting. It captures the madness of the era. 00:13:58.840 --> 00:14:01.820 Suddenly, Waugh isn't the failed teacher anymore. 00:14:02.039 --> 00:14:04.600 He's the hottest young writer in London. He has 00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:07.860 money. He has fame. He has a wife. Things are 00:14:07.860 --> 00:14:10.240 looking up. And then the rug gets pulled out. 00:14:10.299 --> 00:14:12.840 The betrayal. This is the event that I think 00:14:12.840 --> 00:14:15.799 really hardens him. While Waugh was away in the 00:14:15.799 --> 00:14:18.100 country writing travel articles, you know, working 00:14:18.100 --> 00:14:20.659 to support them, Evelyn confessed that she was 00:14:20.659 --> 00:14:22.820 having an affair. And not just with anyone. No. 00:14:23.159 --> 00:14:26.480 with their mutual friend, John Haygate, a man 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:30.019 they socialized with, a man Waugh trusted. That 00:14:30.019 --> 00:14:32.159 double betrayal must have been devastating. It 00:14:32.159 --> 00:14:35.740 broke him. He filed for divorce in 1929. But 00:14:35.740 --> 00:14:38.259 the psychological wound went deep. Biographers 00:14:38.259 --> 00:14:40.980 argue that this betrayal is the root of the misogyny 00:14:40.980 --> 00:14:43.220 and the deep cynicism about human relationships 00:14:43.220 --> 00:14:45.919 that pervades his later work. He decided people 00:14:45.919 --> 00:14:48.399 couldn't be trusted. And specifically women in 00:14:48.399 --> 00:14:50.480 his mind. He just shut down that part of himself. 00:14:50.700 --> 00:14:53.440 So he's alone again. He's heartbroken. The bright 00:14:53.440 --> 00:14:56.740 young thing party is over. And in 1930, he makes 00:14:56.740 --> 00:14:59.340 a move that completely baffles his bohemian friends. 00:14:59.539 --> 00:15:02.539 He converts to Roman Catholicism. This was headline 00:15:02.539 --> 00:15:06.200 news in his circle. Why would the cynical, modern, 00:15:06.360 --> 00:15:09.879 debauched Evelyn Waugh join the most traditional, 00:15:10.019 --> 00:15:12.639 rigid institution on Earth? It made no sense 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:14.919 to them. It wasn't an emotional born again experience, 00:15:15.200 --> 00:15:17.159 was it? It was something else. No, not at all. 00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:19.480 It was intellectual. He took instruction from 00:15:19.480 --> 00:15:22.509 Father Martin Darcy, a brilliant Jesuit. Waugh 00:15:22.509 --> 00:15:25.389 approached it like a logic problem. A logic problem. 00:15:25.490 --> 00:15:27.750 He looked at the world, the chaos, the betrayal, 00:15:28.049 --> 00:15:31.389 the lack of moral fiber, and he decided that 00:15:31.389 --> 00:15:34.649 without a structure, without God, life was meaningless. 00:15:35.090 --> 00:15:39.169 He wrote that life is unintelligible and unendurable 00:15:39.169 --> 00:15:42.129 without God. Unintelligible and unendurable. 00:15:42.210 --> 00:15:44.509 That is a terrifying phrase. It implies that 00:15:44.509 --> 00:15:46.429 without the church, he felt like he was staring 00:15:46.429 --> 00:15:48.769 into an abyss. Exactly. He needed the rules. 00:15:48.889 --> 00:15:51.269 He needed the order. There's a famous story. 00:15:51.350 --> 00:15:53.470 It's maybe apocryphal, but it rings so true. 00:15:53.690 --> 00:15:55.629 Where a friend asked him years later, Evelyn, 00:15:55.710 --> 00:15:58.509 you're so mean. You're so nasty. How can you 00:15:58.509 --> 00:16:00.149 call yourself a Christian? And the response? 00:16:00.529 --> 00:16:03.149 Was said, you have no idea how much nastier I 00:16:03.149 --> 00:16:05.669 would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural 00:16:05.669 --> 00:16:09.590 aid, I would hardly be a human being. Wow. That 00:16:09.590 --> 00:16:12.149 is profound self -awareness. He's admitting that 00:16:12.149 --> 00:16:14.470 the religion isn't a cure. It's a leash. It was 00:16:14.470 --> 00:16:17.090 the cage for the monster. He believed that without 00:16:17.090 --> 00:16:19.509 the sacraments, without confession, he would 00:16:19.509 --> 00:16:22.750 be a moral vacuum. So we enter the 1930s. He's 00:16:22.750 --> 00:16:26.129 now Catholic, divorced, and famous. And he decides 00:16:26.129 --> 00:16:28.529 to see the world. But he doesn't go on luxury 00:16:28.529 --> 00:16:30.529 cruises. He goes to the rough spots. He does. 00:16:30.750 --> 00:16:34.480 The 1930s were his era of the traveler. He became 00:16:34.480 --> 00:16:36.860 a special correspondent for newspapers. He wanted 00:16:36.860 --> 00:16:39.799 to go where the trouble was. In 1930, he went 00:16:39.799 --> 00:16:42.440 to Abyssinia, modern -day Ethiopia, to cover 00:16:42.440 --> 00:16:45.539 the coronation of Emperor Hael Selassie. Now, 00:16:45.559 --> 00:16:47.740 most of the world press treated this as this 00:16:47.740 --> 00:16:51.419 majestic, exotic event, the Lion of Judah. The 00:16:51.419 --> 00:16:54.059 pageantry. Well, hated it. He hated it. He saw 00:16:54.059 --> 00:16:57.100 it as a sham. He saw a brutal, disorganized regime 00:16:57.100 --> 00:16:59.620 trying to put on a costume show for the West. 00:16:59.759 --> 00:17:02.200 He viewed it with utter cynicism. He called it 00:17:02.200 --> 00:17:05.039 a propaganda effort. And this trip gave us the 00:17:05.039 --> 00:17:07.660 novel Black Mischief. But he went back a few 00:17:07.660 --> 00:17:11.259 years later in 1935 when Mussolini invaded. And 00:17:11.259 --> 00:17:12.920 this is where we have to talk about his politics, 00:17:13.099 --> 00:17:16.720 which were complicated. Complicated is a very 00:17:16.720 --> 00:17:18.609 generous word. They were controversial then, 00:17:18.750 --> 00:17:21.750 and they are definitely controversial now. Waugh 00:17:21.750 --> 00:17:23.930 supported the Italian invasion. He supported 00:17:23.930 --> 00:17:26.549 the fascists. He did. Now, it wasn't because 00:17:26.549 --> 00:17:28.569 he was a card -carrying fascist, but because 00:17:28.569 --> 00:17:30.670 he was obsessed with the idea of civilization 00:17:30.670 --> 00:17:33.250 with a capital C. So how did he rationalize that? 00:17:33.390 --> 00:17:37.609 He viewed Abyssinia as savage and chaotic. He 00:17:37.609 --> 00:17:39.890 viewed the Italians, who were fellow Catholics, 00:17:40.049 --> 00:17:42.470 heirs to the Roman Empire, as the bringers of 00:17:42.470 --> 00:17:46.259 order and roads and structure. He wrote a book, 00:17:46.299 --> 00:17:49.619 Wall in Abyssinia, that was so pro -Italian that 00:17:49.619 --> 00:17:51.900 critics at the time called it a fascist tract. 00:17:52.200 --> 00:17:54.019 It's important to understand this, not to judge 00:17:54.019 --> 00:17:56.220 him, but to see how his obsession with order 00:17:56.220 --> 00:17:59.160 could blind him to the brutality of the invasion. 00:17:59.380 --> 00:18:02.539 Precisely. His fear of chaos was so strong that 00:18:02.539 --> 00:18:04.400 he would side with the dictator if he believed 00:18:04.400 --> 00:18:07.460 it meant maintaining structure. But looking at 00:18:07.460 --> 00:18:10.240 the silver lining of his journalism career, his 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:12.519 frustration with the press pack gave us one of 00:18:12.519 --> 00:18:15.200 the greatest comic novels ever written. If you 00:18:15.200 --> 00:18:17.160 haven't read Scoop, you are missing out on something 00:18:17.160 --> 00:18:20.779 wonderful. It is the ultimate satire of journalism. 00:18:20.980 --> 00:18:23.359 It came directly from his experience in Abyssinia, 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:26.160 watching reporters lie, cheat, and just invent 00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:28.460 stories because they were too lazy to find the 00:18:28.460 --> 00:18:32.279 truth. He skewered the fake news of his day before 00:18:32.279 --> 00:18:34.460 the term even existed. He then went to South 00:18:34.460 --> 00:18:36.839 America, right? British, Guyana, and Brazil. 00:18:37.099 --> 00:18:39.980 Yes, and it was a miserable trip. He was bored, 00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:44.589 hot, and lonely. but his misery is our game because 00:18:44.589 --> 00:18:47.630 it inspired his novel A Handful of Dust. We have 00:18:47.630 --> 00:18:49.410 to talk about the ending of that book. We won't 00:18:49.410 --> 00:18:51.470 spoil the whole plot, but the ending is iconic. 00:18:51.529 --> 00:18:54.910 It's legendary. It is a pure nightmare scenario. 00:18:55.309 --> 00:18:58.769 The protagonist, Tony Last, is this civilized 00:18:58.769 --> 00:19:00.670 English gentleman who ends up trapped in the 00:19:00.670 --> 00:19:03.549 Amazon jungle, held captive by an illiterate 00:19:03.549 --> 00:19:06.009 settler who forces him to read the complete works 00:19:06.009 --> 00:19:08.430 of Charles Dickens aloud over and over again, 00:19:08.569 --> 00:19:11.880 forever. That's chilling. It's the ultimate hell 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:15.019 for a man like Wa trapped in squalor, forced 00:19:15.019 --> 00:19:17.700 to consume sentimentality. And the crazy thing 00:19:17.700 --> 00:19:20.579 is, Wa wrote that ending as a short story first. 00:19:20.859 --> 00:19:23.440 He liked it so much, he basically said, I have 00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:25.400 to write a novel just to get to this ending. 00:19:25.539 --> 00:19:28.420 He built the whole book around that one nightmarish 00:19:28.420 --> 00:19:30.819 image. During all this wandering, all this travel, 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:33.220 he was effectively homeless, wasn't he? He was. 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:35.759 He was sleeping on sofas, staying at clubs. He 00:19:35.759 --> 00:19:38.099 was a nomad. But he eventually found a new anchor. 00:19:38.490 --> 00:19:41.269 laura herbert laura herbert and in true wa fashion 00:19:41.269 --> 00:19:45.369 it wasn't simple no laura was young she was from 00:19:45.369 --> 00:19:47.690 an aristocratic catholic family which was perfect 00:19:47.690 --> 00:19:50.690 on paper for him but she was the first cousin 00:19:50.690 --> 00:19:53.230 of his first wife she evelyn the family tree 00:19:53.230 --> 00:19:55.490 is a wreath that is so awkward it made things 00:19:55.490 --> 00:19:59.109 very awkward but wall was determined He spent 00:19:59.109 --> 00:20:01.630 years petitioning the Catholic Church to annul 00:20:01.630 --> 00:20:03.690 his first marriage so he could marry Laura in 00:20:03.690 --> 00:20:06.049 the church. And he got it. He finally succeeded. 00:20:06.309 --> 00:20:09.670 They married in 1937. Her grandmother bought 00:20:09.670 --> 00:20:12.329 them a manor house, Pierce Court. So he finally 00:20:12.329 --> 00:20:14.630 has the country estate. He has the Catholic wife. 00:20:14.849 --> 00:20:17.130 He has the religion. He's playing the part of 00:20:17.130 --> 00:20:21.670 the English gentleman. And then, 1939. Hitler 00:20:21.670 --> 00:20:25.650 invades Poland. And Wa, at age 36, decides he 00:20:25.650 --> 00:20:27.970 must fight. This is one of the most baffling 00:20:27.970 --> 00:20:30.250 parts of his life to me. Here is a man who is 00:20:30.250 --> 00:20:33.210 physically unfit, hates authority, is rude to 00:20:33.210 --> 00:20:36.109 subordinates, and is generally impossible to 00:20:36.109 --> 00:20:38.750 work with. And he joins the Royal Marines. Why? 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:40.920 He was a terrible soldier. Let's be absolutely 00:20:40.920 --> 00:20:43.299 clear. He was brave. He had no fear of death. 00:20:43.480 --> 00:20:46.019 But he was a management nightmare. The training 00:20:46.019 --> 00:20:48.200 almost broke him physically. He said his spine 00:20:48.200 --> 00:20:50.579 was so stiff he couldn't even hold a pen. But 00:20:50.579 --> 00:20:53.160 the real problem was his personality. He treated 00:20:53.160 --> 00:20:55.460 his platoon like they were servants. Worse. He 00:20:55.460 --> 00:20:58.579 was haughty, sarcastic, and cold. He refused 00:20:58.579 --> 00:21:01.119 to bond with the men. It got so bad that when 00:21:01.119 --> 00:21:03.279 he was stationed in Scotland, his commanding 00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:05.420 officer had to transfer him to an intelligence 00:21:05.420 --> 00:21:08.220 role. Why? Because the officer was genuinely 00:21:08.559 --> 00:21:11.099 terrified that if they went into combat, Wa's 00:21:11.099 --> 00:21:13.359 own men would shoot him in the back. That is 00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:16.039 a staggering level of unpopularity. You have 00:21:16.039 --> 00:21:17.779 to move you so you don't get fragged by your 00:21:17.779 --> 00:21:20.519 own troops. That's how bad it was. But he did 00:21:20.519 --> 00:21:23.700 see action. He was at the Battle of Dakar, a 00:21:23.700 --> 00:21:26.400 failed operation, and he was in Crete during 00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:28.660 the evacuation. The retreat from Crete was a 00:21:28.660 --> 00:21:32.309 disaster. It was chaos. Officers fleeing, soldiers 00:21:32.309 --> 00:21:35.170 surrendering. Wa maintained his composure, but 00:21:35.170 --> 00:21:37.390 he was disgusted. He saw cowardice and disorder. 00:21:37.549 --> 00:21:40.130 It shattered any romantic illusions he had about 00:21:40.130 --> 00:21:42.869 the glory of war. So he realized war was just 00:21:42.869 --> 00:21:46.750 another form of modern chaos. Exactly. And amidst 00:21:46.750 --> 00:21:48.890 this disillusionment, after he breaks his leg 00:21:48.890 --> 00:21:51.579 in a parachuting accident, he takes leave. He 00:21:51.579 --> 00:21:54.019 goes to a hotel in Devon. And while the world 00:21:54.019 --> 00:21:56.220 is burning, he writes a book about a teddy bear 00:21:56.220 --> 00:21:59.039 and a stately home. Brideshead Revisited. This 00:21:59.039 --> 00:22:01.799 is the pivot point. This is the big one. It's 00:22:01.799 --> 00:22:03.720 the book that changed his life and his legacy. 00:22:03.940 --> 00:22:06.440 Up until this point, Waugh was known for satire. 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:09.759 Decline and fall, vile bodies, they were sharp, 00:22:09.859 --> 00:22:12.599 jagged, cynical. Brideshead is different. How 00:22:12.599 --> 00:22:15.259 so? It's lush, it's emotional, it's sentimental. 00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:17.400 He called it a love letter to a vanished age. 00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:20.720 He genuinely believed that the English aristocracy 00:22:20.720 --> 00:22:23.039 was going to be wiped out by the war and the 00:22:23.039 --> 00:22:25.359 socialist government that he was sure would follow. 00:22:25.480 --> 00:22:29.079 He wanted to preserve that world in amber. It's 00:22:29.079 --> 00:22:31.940 also his first explicitly Catholic novel. It's 00:22:31.940 --> 00:22:34.480 about the operation of grace on a group of sinners. 00:22:34.779 --> 00:22:37.759 The public reaction was massive. Especially in 00:22:37.759 --> 00:22:40.279 America. It became a book of the month club selection. 00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:43.039 It made him genuinely wealthy for the first time. 00:22:43.039 --> 00:22:46.089 But the critics. They turned on him. He thought 00:22:46.089 --> 00:22:48.269 he had gone soft. They thought he had gone snobbish. 00:22:48.490 --> 00:22:51.269 Connor Cruz O 'Brien famously attacked the book 00:22:51.269 --> 00:22:53.890 for its mystical veneration of the upper classes. 00:22:53.970 --> 00:22:57.150 They said he was worshipping the rich. Do I agree? 00:22:57.640 --> 00:23:00.099 Later in life, he kind of did. He admitted he 00:23:00.099 --> 00:23:02.339 had overdone it. He said he had been on a simplistic 00:23:02.339 --> 00:23:05.140 food diet during wartime rationing. So when he 00:23:05.140 --> 00:23:07.440 wrote the book, he gorged himself on rich language. 00:23:07.539 --> 00:23:09.319 He compared the book to eating too much whipped 00:23:09.319 --> 00:23:11.720 cream. But whipped cream or not, it stands as 00:23:11.720 --> 00:23:13.900 a masterpiece of style. Absolutely. The sentences 00:23:13.900 --> 00:23:15.880 are perfect. You can't deny the beauty of the 00:23:15.880 --> 00:23:18.240 prose. There is one last chapter to his war, 00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:21.539 the Yugoslavia mission. This is a fascinating 00:23:21.539 --> 00:23:24.970 historical footnote. Waugh was recruited by Randolph 00:23:24.970 --> 00:23:28.170 Churchill Winston's son to go to Yugoslavia and 00:23:28.170 --> 00:23:31.170 act as a liaison with Marshall Tito's communist 00:23:31.170 --> 00:23:34.450 partisans. A conservative Catholic meeting a 00:23:34.450 --> 00:23:36.650 communist revolutionary. What could go wrong? 00:23:36.809 --> 00:23:39.700 It was a disaster waiting to happen. Wall hated 00:23:39.700 --> 00:23:43.440 Tito. He saw the partisans not as liberators, 00:23:43.440 --> 00:23:46.279 but as the next oppressors. And he became obsessed 00:23:46.279 --> 00:23:48.500 with the fate of the Catholic Church in Croatia. 00:23:48.799 --> 00:23:51.440 He saw that the communists were going to persecute 00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:53.759 the priests. So he wrote a report about it. A 00:23:53.759 --> 00:23:56.519 very detailed report warning the British government 00:23:56.519 --> 00:23:59.319 that their new ally, Tito, was going to destroy 00:23:59.319 --> 00:24:01.789 the church. And the government buried it. The 00:24:01.789 --> 00:24:04.390 foreign office suppressed it. It was real politic. 00:24:04.670 --> 00:24:06.990 Britain needed Tito to kill Nazis. They didn't 00:24:06.990 --> 00:24:09.309 care about a few priests in Croatia. So he felt 00:24:09.309 --> 00:24:11.930 betrayed. Totally betrayed. He felt that the 00:24:11.930 --> 00:24:13.950 war, which was supposed to be a crusade against 00:24:13.950 --> 00:24:17.369 evil, had just traded one evil Nazism for another 00:24:17.369 --> 00:24:20.450 communism. This betrayal sets the stage for the 00:24:20.450 --> 00:24:23.710 post -war war. The monster emerges fully formed. 00:24:23.890 --> 00:24:27.349 He returned to England a bitter man. The Labor 00:24:27.349 --> 00:24:30.690 Party won the 1945 election. The welfare state 00:24:30.690 --> 00:24:34.130 was born. The age of the common man. Wa hated 00:24:34.130 --> 00:24:37.470 it. He absolutely loathed it. He felt like a 00:24:37.470 --> 00:24:39.690 stranger in his own country. He retreated to 00:24:39.690 --> 00:24:42.109 his country house and basically put up the drawbridge. 00:24:42.349 --> 00:24:45.210 He did. He became an eccentric collector. He 00:24:45.210 --> 00:24:48.329 started buying Victorian paintings, narrative 00:24:48.329 --> 00:24:51.009 art, fairy paintings, which in the late 40s were 00:24:51.009 --> 00:24:54.170 considered absolute junk. Really? Oh, yeah. He 00:24:54.170 --> 00:24:56.250 bought a Rossetti painting for 10 pounds. That's 00:24:56.250 --> 00:24:58.390 like buying a Van Gogh at a garage sale today. 00:24:58.609 --> 00:25:01.250 People laughed at him, but he loved that era. 00:25:01.329 --> 00:25:03.710 He wanted to live in the 19th century. He surrounded 00:25:03.710 --> 00:25:05.849 himself with the past to block out the present. 00:25:06.069 --> 00:25:07.809 But the walls he built couldn't keep out his 00:25:07.809 --> 00:25:10.569 own demons, could they? In 1954, the fortress 00:25:10.569 --> 00:25:13.789 collapsed. The breakdown. This is the story of 00:25:13.789 --> 00:25:16.990 the ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. By the 1950s, 00:25:16.990 --> 00:25:18.970 Waugh was in bad shame physically. He was drinking 00:25:18.970 --> 00:25:21.430 heavily, and he was taking a massive amount of 00:25:21.430 --> 00:25:23.869 chloral and bromide to help him sleep. A dangerous 00:25:23.869 --> 00:25:27.309 cocktail. A very dangerous cocktail. He decided 00:25:27.309 --> 00:25:29.829 to take a cruise to Ceylon, what's now Sri Lanka, 00:25:30.069 --> 00:25:32.829 to recover his health. But as soon as he got 00:25:32.829 --> 00:25:36.069 on the ship... Things got weird. He started hearing 00:25:36.069 --> 00:25:39.130 voices. Vivid, distinct voices. He thought the 00:25:39.130 --> 00:25:41.569 other passengers were whispering about him. He 00:25:41.569 --> 00:25:43.569 thought there was a mutiny on board. He heard 00:25:43.569 --> 00:25:46.170 a jazz band playing that didn't exist. He heard 00:25:46.170 --> 00:25:49.150 the voice of a BBC interviewer mocking him from 00:25:49.150 --> 00:25:51.549 the ventilation ducts. So he was having full 00:25:51.549 --> 00:25:53.730 -blown hallucinations. Full -blown psychosis. 00:25:53.930 --> 00:25:56.730 He wrote these letters home to his wife, Laura, 00:25:56.910 --> 00:25:59.069 detailing these persecutions as if they were 00:25:59.069 --> 00:26:01.130 fact. The captain is against me. Things like 00:26:01.130 --> 00:26:03.809 that. He eventually got off the ship, flew back 00:26:03.809 --> 00:26:06.589 to London, and was diagnosed with bromide poisoning. 00:26:06.890 --> 00:26:09.029 He was poisoning himself with his sleeping meds. 00:26:09.089 --> 00:26:11.890 Yes. Once he stopped the drugs, the voices stopped. 00:26:12.109 --> 00:26:14.210 But what makes this deep dive worthy is what 00:26:14.210 --> 00:26:17.109 he did next. Most people would hide this shame. 00:26:17.710 --> 00:26:20.349 Waugh wrote a novel about it. The Ordeal of Gilbert 00:26:20.349 --> 00:26:23.190 Pinfold. He fictionalized his own madness. He 00:26:23.190 --> 00:26:25.349 called it his barmy book. He told friends, I 00:26:25.349 --> 00:26:28.589 went clean off my onion. It was a way of reclaiming 00:26:28.589 --> 00:26:30.670 control. Turning his vulnerability into art. 00:26:30.940 --> 00:26:33.740 Exactly. And it's arguably his most revealing 00:26:33.740 --> 00:26:36.740 book because it shows us the paranoia that was 00:26:36.740 --> 00:26:40.220 always lurking just beneath the surface of that 00:26:40.220 --> 00:26:42.240 crusty exterior. We're nearing the end of the 00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:45.319 timeline. We're in the 1960s. Waugh is now the 00:26:45.319 --> 00:26:47.900 grand old man. He's interviewed on that famous 00:26:47.900 --> 00:26:50.960 BBC show Face to Face. If you look it up on YouTube, 00:26:51.160 --> 00:26:54.380 you see the mask in full effect. He sits there 00:26:54.380 --> 00:26:57.259 looking like a grumpy toad, answering questions 00:26:57.259 --> 00:27:00.079 with monosyllables, treating the interviewer 00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:02.640 with utter disdain. He played the part to perfection. 00:27:02.839 --> 00:27:05.839 Oh, completely. He even refused a CBE, a Commander 00:27:05.839 --> 00:27:07.599 of the British Empire award, because he felt 00:27:07.599 --> 00:27:09.700 he deserved a knighthood. I am not a commoner. 00:27:09.720 --> 00:27:12.859 I deserve a sir. Pure entitlement. But tragic 00:27:12.859 --> 00:27:15.259 in a way. He was holding on to a hierarchy that 00:27:15.259 --> 00:27:18.180 no longer existed. And then the final blow. The 00:27:18.180 --> 00:27:20.980 one thing that had sustained him. The church 00:27:20.980 --> 00:27:23.960 changed. Vatican II. Right. The Catholic Church 00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:26.359 decided to modernize. They moved from the Latin 00:27:26.359 --> 00:27:29.859 mass to the vernacular. Mass in English. Handshakes. 00:27:30.079 --> 00:27:32.319 Guitars in church. For a traditionalist like 00:27:32.319 --> 00:27:35.160 Waugh, this was heresy. It broke his heart. It 00:27:35.160 --> 00:27:37.480 truly did. He wrote, The buggering up of the 00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:40.359 church is a deep sorrow to me. He felt that the 00:27:40.359 --> 00:27:42.700 church had surrendered to the modern world. The 00:27:42.700 --> 00:27:45.519 mystery was gone. The mystery was gone. The Latin, 00:27:45.519 --> 00:27:48.019 which linked him to history, to the saints, to 00:27:48.019 --> 00:27:50.960 that sense of order, was gone. It's almost poetic 00:27:50.960 --> 00:27:52.960 that he didn't live long in that new world. No. 00:27:53.279 --> 00:27:57.099 He died on Easter Sunday, 1966. He had just come 00:27:57.099 --> 00:27:58.940 home from hearing a Latin mass, one of the few 00:27:58.940 --> 00:28:01.319 places that still offered it. He went into his 00:28:01.319 --> 00:28:04.000 library and passed away. He was buried at his 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:06.759 home in Cum Flore. So we look back at this whole 00:28:06.759 --> 00:28:10.640 stack of research. The bullied boy. The Oxfordist 00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:14.920 thete. The traveler. The soldier. The monster. 00:28:14.980 --> 00:28:17.279 Who was he? It's the question that biographers 00:28:17.279 --> 00:28:19.859 still fight over. Was he a monster? There are 00:28:19.859 --> 00:28:22.079 so many stories of him being incredibly cruel, 00:28:22.279 --> 00:28:25.200 telling his own children they were boring, insulting 00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:27.359 guests at his dinner table. But then there are 00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:29.680 also stories of him giving huge amounts of money 00:28:29.680 --> 00:28:33.359 to poor friends, visiting the sick, anonymously. 00:28:33.500 --> 00:28:36.799 I think the key is the mask. Paula Byrne, a wonderful 00:28:36.799 --> 00:28:38.759 biographer, suggests that the Krusty Colonel 00:28:38.759 --> 00:28:41.220 was a character he created. A suit of armor. 00:28:41.380 --> 00:28:44.119 A defense mechanism. A very effective one. If 00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:45.960 he acted like a monster, people would keep their 00:28:45.960 --> 00:28:48.039 distance. And he couldn't be hurt. He couldn't 00:28:48.039 --> 00:28:50.359 be betrayed like he was by his first wife or, 00:28:50.400 --> 00:28:52.380 you know, by his father. But it came at a cost. 00:28:52.660 --> 00:28:55.240 It came at a huge cost. He died a lonely man 00:28:55.240 --> 00:28:58.660 in many ways. And yet... The books survive. The 00:28:58.660 --> 00:29:00.779 books survive. And that is the ultimate redemption, 00:29:00.900 --> 00:29:03.160 isn't it? You can hate his politics. You can 00:29:03.160 --> 00:29:05.900 hate his snobbery. You can hate the way he treated 00:29:05.900 --> 00:29:08.660 his kids. But you cannot read a paragraph of 00:29:08.660 --> 00:29:11.240 Scoop or Brideshead or a handful of dust and 00:29:11.240 --> 00:29:14.400 deny the genius. Clive James said, nobody ever 00:29:14.400 --> 00:29:18.220 wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English. That's 00:29:18.220 --> 00:29:20.950 it. In an age where we communicate in emojis 00:29:20.950 --> 00:29:23.789 and broken sentences, Waugh's obsession with 00:29:23.789 --> 00:29:26.529 the right word, the perfect cadence, the precise 00:29:26.529 --> 00:29:29.710 insult, it's a masterclass. He predicted that 00:29:29.710 --> 00:29:32.009 literature might die. He thought the modern world 00:29:32.009 --> 00:29:34.309 would kill the attention span required for art. 00:29:34.470 --> 00:29:36.410 And maybe that's our final thought. Maybe that's 00:29:36.410 --> 00:29:38.329 why we need to read him now more than ever. To 00:29:38.329 --> 00:29:41.609 prove him wrong. Or maybe to realize he was right 00:29:41.609 --> 00:29:44.190 and appreciate what we've lost. So if a listener 00:29:44.190 --> 00:29:46.210 has never read a word of Waugh, where do they 00:29:46.210 --> 00:29:48.990 start? I'd say if you want to laugh until your 00:29:48.990 --> 00:29:51.710 sides hurt, read Scoop. If you want to be swept 00:29:51.710 --> 00:29:54.869 away by beauty and sadness and nostalgia, read 00:29:54.869 --> 00:29:57.630 Brideshead Revisited. You can't go wrong with 00:29:57.630 --> 00:30:01.630 either. A complex man. A difficult life. But 00:30:01.630 --> 00:30:04.049 an incredible legacy. Thanks for walking us through 00:30:04.049 --> 00:30:06.029 the life of Evelyn Waugh. My pleasure. It was 00:30:06.029 --> 00:30:07.789 fascinating. And thank you for listening to The 00:30:07.789 --> 00:30:09.589 Deep Dive. We'll see you next time.