Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

This one really couldn't miss, and it doesn't. Despite the multiple biographies of Evelyn Waugh and his circle no one yet has really made clear the story of his infatuation in the Twenties and Thirties with the aristocratic Lygon family, the inspiration for the doomed Flyte family of his great work BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. The Flytes are so steeped in wealth, glamor and decay that a biography about their real-life originals is interesting to just about anyone interested in Waugh or his era. Like his narrator in BRIDESHEAD Charles Ryder, the middle-class Waugh first became infatuated with the family's gay and alcoholic second son at Oxford: Hugh Lygon, like Sebastian Flyte, was considered a kind of demigod on campus because of his beauty and gentleness. Eventually Waugh's interest became focused more on Hugh's sisters: the glamorous Maimie, the model for Julia and a girlfriend of Prince George, and the plain but loveable "Coote" who served as the original for Cordelia. Like the Flytes' paterfamilias the Marquis of Marchmain, the head of the Lygons, the Earl Beauchamp, lived in disgrace apart from his pious wife because of his sexual malfeasances, but in this case the Earl had been hounded out of society by his brother-in-law the Duke of Westminster for his homosexual affairs. Paula Byrne unravels the story here of all the Lygons, which has hitherto been alluded to but gone largely unrecorded, and of the family's close relationship for decades with Waugh. Along the way, Byrne also provides an intelligent reappraisal of Waugh's character. Biographies are often vastly hleped if their authors genuinely feel affection for their biographical subjects; this does not mean they have to ignore their flaws, but rather that they have to make us feel why their personalities are worth our attention. Byrne clearly had an agenda in writing this book of rehabilitating Waugh from his by-now somewhat disreputable public image; she works hard to dispel the notions that he was a cruel crank by pointing out that most of the most truly awful things he went on record as saying were in order to assume a persona for his own (and his friends') amusement. So far, so good: unfortunately, Byrne stretches too far when she tries to argue he is nothing like the toadying hanger-on to aristocracy he has been popularly supposed to be. Despite her efforts to show us Waugh could be critical of his friends in high places it's all too clear from her own compelling narrative that he adored knowing people with titles and did everything he could to be reinvited to the Lygon's seat of Madresfield Court (which was more of the model of the Victorian Gothic pile Hetton Abbey from his A HANDFUL OF DUST that the Baroque palace of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED). Yet given how glamorous the Lygons were--and how they fanned his imagination for not just one but several of his novels--it's impossible to find much fault with this if you're interested in Waugh's writing at all. Byrne is also quite a good writer,

Byrne, Paula. "Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead", Harper, 2010. The Inspiration for "Brideshead Revisited" Amos Lassen One of my favorite books of all time is "Brideshead Revisited" and I read whatever I can about it. This new book slipped by unnoticed until I discovered it by accident. It is the story of Evelyn and the Waugh family who served as the inspiration for the book. I found answers to several questions I had here and this is a wonderful literary biography. Waugh came from middle-class upbringing and when he went to Oxford, he met the pretty people of the sophisticated upper class. At Oxford he met Hugh Lygon from an aristocratic family that had met with scandal. The father of the family left England because of some homosexual activates. Waugh and Hugh became quite friendly and Evelyn also became friendly with Hugh's sisters. The family home, Madresfield Court, came to be the model for Brideshead and Hugh was the model for Sebastian. "Brideshead Revisited" was published after Waugh had already achieved fame and it came out while World War II was going strong. As we all know, "Brideshead Revisited" is the story of a family as it undergoes a journey to religious faith and a paean to a world that was to be no more. It is personal in that Waugh wrote it as a testimonial to a family that he loved. Paula Byrne looks at Waugh through his friends and we see a man who was complex and loving. His novel transformed his own life and through it and this book we become aware of what shaped Evelyn Waugh and his sexual identity. We learn of Waugh from the cradle to the grave and we learn about his family, his relationship with religion and the books that he wrote. The book is the product of meticulous research and it reads more like a novel than a biography. The Waugh family is intriguing and Byrne does them proud with this outstanding biography.

While I love literature, I am very rarely interested in books that accompany it- biographies, collections of letters, or books that purport to tell the " real story" behind the book. This is delightful exception. I was intrigued by the real family that inspired " Brideshead" and the author does a great job of explaining Waugh's close relationship them, how he did or did not disguise them in the novel, and the reaction of the family to the book. ( Did anyone ever really belive the author's note "I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they."?) In addition to the biographical information that helps us understand Waugh and the world he created, the author does a good job of placing the real people and events in context, giving us a better understanding of the intersection of Catholicism and the peerage that is so important to the novel, and of the theme of people struggling to reconcile their lives with God and theology. A must read for anyone who has read and loved "Brideshead Revisited"

I freely admit to an aversion to most biographies; those half ton tomes stuffed to overflowing with superfluous information, regurgitated facts that represent the flotsam and jetsam of the life in question as opposed to actual milestones and achievements. Happily, this is not the case with Paula Byrne's Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead Mad World, a biography as witty and amusing as its subject, which, in the case of Evelyn Waugh, is saying a great deal. As is the case with most historical biographies, Mad World follows Waugh's life from cradle to grave. As we trek along we are treated to brief portraits of Waugh's parents and brother Alec, all those Mitford sisters, his annulled first marriage and life-long second, his conversion to Catholicism, as well as pointedly detailed descriptions of his published works, including Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited. The pace picks up (and never flags) once Waugh enters Oxford, where he quickly develops friendships with the likes of Harold Acton and Brian Howard, and enters into a series of homosexual relationships, the most profound and lasting with Hugh Lygon, second son of the 7th Earl Beauchamp, and the inspiration for Brideshead's Sebastian Flyte. Waugh is taken under Lygon's wing, and is introduced to the family, becoming a life-long friend and confidante of sisters Mary and Dorothy, as well as a fixture at the family manse Madresfield (hence "Mad World"); and was witness to the disgrace of Earl Beauchamp, forced to flee the country or face charges of Gross Indecency, and the family's dishonor. Byrne has painstakingly researched her material, and though her finished text is rich in detail and critical observances, it seems never heavy handed or in the least tedious. Indeed, her work reads as though it were a novel, a modern day retelling of Waugh's classic Brideshead Revisited, which is the kindest compliment it could be paid.

A biography needs to have a Point of View. Usually it is its subject and should be so if he is unlikely to be portrayed more than once. Evelyn Waugh is not such a case. The interest in him is sufficiently wide to accommodate different Points of View. Mad World is written from the Point of View of the Lygon family, with whom Waugh was friendly and whose members are in part associated with individual characters in Brideshead Revisited. Paula Byrne has done her subject proud and, if one puts a price on the pleasure something provides, it is hopelessly under-priced. Mad World reveals much of what I did not know of Evelyn Waugh, even though I have read about him to a considerable degree. It reveals much more about the Lygon family members. How interesting it is that seemingly insignificant events in Brideshead Revisited happened in one degree or another to people mentioned in this biography. Two villains make their appearance. The first is the second Duke of Westminster, a character as malignant to the seventh Earl Beauchamp as the appalling Marquess of Queensbury was to Oscar Wilde. The second villain was King George V. He abandoned his loyal servant Beauchamp to the Duke of Westminster's knavery in a manner only less reprehensible to the way he abandoned his cousin, Tsar Nicholas II. After Brideshead Revisited, life did not proceed smoothly for any of the people in this book. I remind myself of the conversation between Cordelia and Charles in Brideshead: ` ... such an engaging child, grown up a plain and pious spinster, full of good works.' Did you think "thwarted"?' It was no time for prevarication. `Yes,' I said, `I did; I don't now so much.' `It's funny,' she said, `that's exactly the word I thought for you and Julia when we were up in the nursery with nanny. "Thwarted passion," I thought...' Thwarted. That's what happened to them all. Paula Byrne's style is free of journalistic puffery, therefore this biography is authoritative. I find very few vague points.