But although Eade dutifully lists what counts as new material-a cache of not very interesting letters Waugh wrote to “Baby” Jungman, a woman he was in love with after his first wife, “She-Evelyn,” left him an interview the first wife gave sometime back and some adjustments to previous accounts of Waugh’s army career-there is nothing revelatory that I could determine. Eade tells us he wrote the book at the request of Alexander Waugh, who gave him full access to the Waugh archives. The new biography by Philip Eade seems to have been written without more purpose than providing another readable account of the life. Both pay serious attention to Waugh’s books as well as his life: Patey with special attention to Waugh’s political and religious ideas Hastings with critical judgments that give a sense of what the man was like.
Since Martin Stannard’s definitive enough two-volume work of twenty-five years ago, there have been two further substantial treatments, by Selina Hastings and Douglas Patey. The arrival of a new biography is not likely to make hearts beat faster, since Waugh has been thoroughly and scrupulously biographed. What the old rascal would have made of The Evelyn Waugh Society we shall never know, though his quick and sardonic temper might well have been less than thrilled. Exciting also, she tells us, for the “growing, cohesive community of Waugh students and admirers” at conferences and other celebrations. Exciting, since Waugh’s grandson, Alexander-who has already written a sharply amusing family memoir-is in charge of producing forty-two volumes of Waugh’s complete works, to be published sometime in the (near?) future by Oxford. “It is an exciting time to be working on Waugh,” writes Ann Pasternak Slater at the beginning of her excellent book on the writer.
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