Sword of Honour Trilogy (Everyman's Library)

Rating:
Summary: Plummy fun
Review: Great fun. The sort of thing that you read in the study with an open fire, a glass of 10 year old port and a cigar smouldering in the ashtray, the Great Dane snoring in the corner next to the mahogany sideboard.

Or that's the image that the book throws up.

I really enjoyed the book, wit in bucketfuls with an irony and a poignancy that had me chuckling away in time to the Great Danes' snoring.

Waugh takes you to the world of officers and gentlemen that he obviously experienced during his own wartime service- the injustice, the inept leadership and the crazed bravado of some of those around him. The waiting, the rumour, the boredom, the politics and luck, both good and bad are all major players in this book. The class system of officers and privates- all of the ingredients that make a Waugh book are here.

Oh yeah: and he fully describes and realises the insignificance of one soldier in the great scheme of things in an army, no matter how hard that one man wants to make a real difference.

Watch out for the exploits of the great Richie Hook- comic relief and so incredibly un-PC it will make you winch and laugh at the same time


Rating:
Summary: Five stars for Waugh, 0 stars for Everyman's Library
Review: Though "Brideshead Revisited" may be his best known work, nothing conveys Waugh's sense of the world better than "The Sword of Honour" trilogy.

His sacramental view of earthly reality is best expressed in a memorable exchange between Guy Crouchback, the book's protagonist, and an obviously overwhelmed Anglican minister.

"... Do you agree," [Guy] asked earnestly, "that the Supernatural Order is not something added to the Natural Order, like music or painting, to make everday life more tolerable? It is everyday life. The supernatural is real; what we call 'real' is a mere shadow, a passing fancy. Don't you agree, Padre?"

"Up to a point." [said the Padre]

Sadly, Alfred A. Knopf's Everyman's Library, a collection of books intended to preserve and popularize the classics of modern literature, isn't up to the task. The binding is stiff and cheap, and the gold embossed lettering on the cover literally disintegrates in your hands. I bought this book hoping it would last a lifetime, but I'll be lucky if it survives the coming year.

Read Waugh for the tonic that he is, but avoid the Everyman's Library like the publishing plague that it is.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy of the Victoria Cross
Review: When these books came out a number of reviewers thought that Waugh had lost his touch. Perhaps the atmosphere of the swinging sixties did not lend to itself a real understanding of the greatness of this work. In my opinion this work represents one of Waugh's major works. While it does not cover every aspect of World War Two (Proust did not feel the need to fight out every battle of World War One either), it does provide a kind of summing up of the state of Britain and what happened to former ruling class, a body that provoked feelings of great affinity from Waugh, even though he was a product of the upper middle class.

The key to understanding Waugh, not just this book, but also all of the others is his distrust of the 20th century. He came of age during the 1920s and biographers have noted an early fascination with the pre-Raphaelites. Although this artistic brotherhood focused on life in the pre-industrial age Waugh the satirist brought his powers to bear on the post World War I modern world its mores and hypocrasies. World War Two brought high taxes and democracy to this admired world of the British gentry and Waugh correctly chronicles this in his summary of the war in the trilogy.
The book is also a wonderful social satire drawing portraits of many of Waugh's own circle including Diana Mosley (With the fascist sympathies air brushed out here) Cyril Connolly and others. He marks the fall of the aristocratic officer and the rise of the "Trimmers" of the world whose heroism is more a result of luck and press puffing than genuine achievement.
The turning point in the book is the Crete campaign. Here British high born leadership collapses finally. Waugh sees this military failure coupled with the subsequent alliance with Bolshevik Russia to be one of the failures of the war. The so-called "Stalingrad sword" which appears as a character in its own right is symbollic of the passing away of the former way of life. It is not surprising that Waugh kills off the saintly Mr. Couchback (the hero's father) at this point in the book to provide a last hurrah for the old Catholic landed gentry.

The book is replete with a full gallary of comic characters. My favorite Apthorpe is unfortunately killed off in the first novel. To detail the reasons would be to deprive future of readers of the genuine pleasure in encountering him in the novels. However despite this absence in the two subsequent volumes, there are plenty to keep one amused. My second favorite of Virginia Troy, who is the ex-wife of our hero, Guy Crouchback. It is entertaining to watch this very worldly woman make her way through war-time Britain. There is Ludovic, the aspirant writer, enlisted man and probably the personification of the future post-war world with his trite novel "The Death Wish." Finally there is Trimmer, a former barber who becomes a hero because Britain needed one who was working class (at least in the opinion of HO HQ).

This is a major work by Waugh and probably his best book after "A Handful of Dust." In many ways it is superior to the earlier masterpiece in that provides Waugh with a wider canvas to express himself. This is a must for all readers of Waugh.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy of the Victoria Cross
Review: When these books came out a number of reviewers thought that Waugh had lost his touch. Perhaps the atmosphere of the swinging sixties did not lend to itself a real understanding of the greatness of this work. In my opinion this work represents one of Waugh's major works. While it does not cover every aspect of World War Two (Proust did not feel the need to fight out every battle of World War One either), it does provide a kind of summing up of the state of Britain and what happened to former ruling class, a body that provoked feelings of great affinity from Waugh, even though he was a product of the upper middle class.

The key to understanding Waugh, not just this book, but also all of the others is his distrust of the 20th century. He came of age during the 1020s and biographers have noted an early fascination with the pre-Raphaelites. Although this artistic brotherhood focused on life in the pre-industrial age Waugh the satirist brought his powers to bear on the post World War I modern world its mores and hypocrasies. World War Two brought high taxes and democracy to this admired world of the British genrry and Waugh correctly chronicles this in his summary of the war in the trilogy.
The book is also a wonderful social satire drawing portraits of many of Waugh's own circle including Diana Mosley *wthe fascist sympathies air brushed out here) Cyril Connolly and others. He marks the fall of the aristocratic officer and the rise of the "Trimmers" of the world whose heroism is more a result of luck and press puffing than genuine achievement.
The turning point in the book is the Crete campaign. Here British high born leadership collapses finally. Waugh sees this military failure coupled with the subsequent alliance with Bolshevik Russia to be one of the failures of the war. The so-called "Stalingrad sword" which appears as a character in its own right is symbollic of the passing away of the former way of life. It is not surprising that Waugh kills off the saintly Mr. Couchback at this point in the book to provide a last hurrah for the old Catholic landed gentry.

The book is replete with a full gallary of comic characters. My favorite Apthorpe is unfortunately killed off in the first novel. However despite this absence in the two subsequent volumes, there are plenty to keep one amused. My second favorite of Virginia Troy, who is the ex-wife of our hero, Guy Crouchback. It is entertaining to watch this very worldly woman make her way through war-time Britain. There is Ludovic, the aspirant writer, enlisted man and probably the personification of the future post-war world with his trite novel "The Death Wish." Finally there is Trimmer, a former barber who becomes a hero because Britain needed one who was working class (at least in the opinion of HO HQ).

THis is a major work by Waugh and probably his best book after "A Handful of Dust." This is a must for all readers of Waugh.