Mad World
Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead
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Mad World
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Keeble
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By:
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Paula Byrne
About this listen
A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited”.
Evelyn Waugh was already famous when “Brideshead Revisited” was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no ‘immediate propaganda value’. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith – an elegy for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier.
The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts, the Marchmains, in “Brideshead Revisited”. William Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, was a warm-hearted, generous and unconventional father whose seven children adored him. When he was forced to flee the country by his scheming brother-in-law, his traumatised children stood firmly by him, defying not only the mores of the day, but also their deeply religious mother.
In this engrossing biography, bestselling author Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through the friendships and loves that mattered most to him. She uncovers a man who, far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, was as loving and complex as the family that inspired him. This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name.
©2012 Paula Byrne (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
‘Completely brilliant, compulsively readable, stunningly researched…This is the future of literary biography’ Mark Amory
‘A marvellous book, warm, witty, and enormously readable…It’s a mad world, my masters, and this book is a calm pool of sanity among the tumult of massed humanity.’ Philip Womack, Daily Telegraph
‘[Paula Byrne] tells the tale with great verve and considerable insight…vigorous and original…she paints a vivid picture of the double standards and hypocrisy of the time.…readable and lively’ Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph
‘If the Waugh who emerges from this book is as snobbish as he ever was, he is more than this, too: loyal, bisexual…, the funniest man alive and the best friend you could ever have. Byrne’s gift as a writer is her ability to combine scholarship with turbo-driven narrative power. “Mad World” is vibrant, absorbing, stranger than fiction.’ Frances Wilson, Sunday Times
"this marvellous book…As well as showing his irrepressible sense of fun, Paula Byrne makes undeniable the warmth, loyalty and complexity of Waugh himself" Country Life
"well-researched…Byrne has trawled all possible archives assiduously" The Independent
"As Paula Byrne's new take on Waugh and the Brideshead myth so vividly shows, new names can now be named….fascianting" Mail on Sunday
What listeners say about Mad World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- C
- 06-10-23
Fascinating
Loved it, as a Waugh fan. Beautifully thought out. Couple of mispronunciations by the reader. And even a reread of a sentence included. But nothing can take away from 5 stars overall.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jason Hill
- 10-07-22
As entertaining as one of his novels.
As entertaining as one of his novels. Waugh comes over as far more sympathetic than I expected. Excellently and archly read or “performed” too.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- JB
- 23-01-24
Very well researched and excellent analysis of books.
A good listen - although editing a bit sloppy (repetitions). Was not expecting a full biography (maybe should have read reviews more closely), and it took ages to get to Mad, which I was most interested in. What a fascinating story - particularly the Prince George bit! Could have done without what seemed like every drunken episode described in detail. But definitely worth listening to if you are a Waugh/Brideshead fan.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Paul Jesson
- 08-04-23
Engrossing for fans of Waugh
If you are an admirer of Evelyn Waugh’s writing this is an ideal supplement to his own letters and diaries. Jonathan Keeble has a good voice that’s easy to listen to although he mispronounces occasionally - Strakey for Strachey and even Evelyn is mispronounced - which is either irritating or amusing depending on your disposition.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 15-04-24
Almost an apologia?
Interesting and thoroughly researched but perhaps a little less than it might have been if the author had not been so inclined to take every chance going to try to scrub clean Waugh’s personal reputation. He was a great novelist and his comic novels remain some of the funniest ever written but clearly he could often be seriously obnoxious when not luxuriating in a world of stately homes and high born people with time on their hands.
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