 Laura Waugh initiated the sale of Waugh’s library after his death by asking her American son-in-law to find a buyer; claimed that a man in a Stetson hat and cowboy boots had arrived unsolicited at the door with checkbook in hand (121).

Unlike some biographies, Barber’s book is balanced and fair. Waugh is neither a monster nor a perfect gentleman. Barber summarizes him quite well:

Evelyn Waugh [is] probably the most paradoxical figure in modern English literature. Waugh wrote some of the funniest passages in the English language, yet for the last twenty years of his life suffered from chronic melancholia. Again he gave large sums of money to Catholic charities and, unprompted, went out of his way to commend other writers whose work he admired; yet he was also a merciless bully, particularly of those who were not equipped to answer back. In later life he behaved like a country gentleman but spoilt the effect by dressing like a bookie in loud check suits and a grey bowler hat…. And so disillusioned did he become with his one-time favourite novel, that he mocked it in the final volume of his war trilogy, .

In the 100+ pages that follow, Barber spins a story consistent with this summary, including both the naughty and nice. It is a refreshing take on Waugh, never marred by preconceived notions of the subject’s least appealing features.

The book is well edited, and Barber mentions all of Waugh’s published books. I found only two minor typos (97,114). One suggestion for a second printing: when the Waughs moved to Combe Florey near Taunton in West Somerset in 1956, they were no closer to Anthony and Violet Powell and Ronald Knox than they had been at Piers Court near Dursley in Gloucestershire (111-12). The Powells and Knox lived in or near the village of Mells in North Somerset, not quite fifty miles from each of Waugh’s country houses.

Up to a Point … Brief Lives: , by Michael Barber. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma

Having seen Jeffrey Manley’s favorable review of Michael Barber’s book, I object not only to some of Manley’s praise but also to the premise of the whole series.

First, Barber comes short of, in Manley’s terms, “combining the existing works,” relying as he does on easily accessible and often questionable sources. Barber does not, for example, consider Donat Gallagher’s thoroughly researched and carefully documented refutations of previous accounts of the annulment of Waugh’s marriage to Evelyn Gardner or, more culpably, Gallagher’s examination of War Office and other documents about the retreat from Crete, and