Evelyn Waugh
by Ann Pasternak Slater, Northcote, £28
Evelyn Waugh’s “self-ironising public persona may have hardened into a grotesque” but, for Ann Pasternak Slater, he remains the “most consistent of our great English comic novelists”.
Pasternak Slater notes that the Waugh-bashers “tend to express their own ideological gripes against Waugh, rather than literary reservations”. This is perhaps an astute, if somewhat disreputable tactic, since most of the books are rather good. More generous readers are willing to admit as much, and even the “objects of harshest satire became his most devoted fans” As Pasternak Slater notes, “Journalists still love Scoop”.
