Volume 35, Number 1 · February 4, 1988
Nobs and Snobs
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903–1939
by Martin Stannard
Norton, 537 pp., $24.95
A shilling life will tell you all the facts, according to Auden. Martin Stannard's rather more expensive biography will tell you more facts than you probably want to know about Evelyn Waugh. Five hundred pages, for the early years alone, seems a lot. And much of the relevant material is already available in print. We have, for the first twenty-one years, Waugh's autobiographical volume, A Little Learning (1964). There are Michael Davie's edition of the Diaries (1976) and Mark Amory's of the Letters (1980). And all that has the advantage of being written in Waugh's own astringent and startling prose, so that we can read with pleasure, even if we feel no strong interest in the writer's not-especially-eventful life. There is also Christopher Sykes's Evelyn Waugh: A Biography (1975). Sykes knew Waugh well, and was a good writer himself. Why not leave it at that?
Review, 3698 words
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