Hot Countries

by Alec Waugh, Lynd Ward (Illustrator)

Describes the author's travels to such places as Tahiti, Martinique, Siam and Ceylon in the early 1900s

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Ebooks

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Born Alexander Raban Waugh to Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic, and publisher. He was the elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh. His third wife was Virginia Sorenson, author of the Newbery Medal-winning Miracles on Maple Hill.

Waugh was educated at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset, from where he was expelled. The result of his experiences was his first, semi-autobiographical novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), clearly inspired by The Harrovians (1931) by Arnold Lunn, and so controversial at the time (it openly mentioned homosexual activities between boys) that Waugh remains the only former pupil to be expelled from the old boys society (The Old Shirburnian Society). It was also a best seller.

Waugh went on to a career as a successful author, although never as successful or innovative as his younger brother. He lived much of his life overseas, in exotic places such as Tangier - a lifestyle made possible by his second marriage, to a rich Australian. His 1957 novel Island in the Sun was a best-seller, as was his 1973 novel, A Fatal Gift.

He also published In Praise of Wine & Certain Noble Spirits (1959), an amusing and discursive guide to the major wine types, and Wines and Spirits , a 1968 book in the Time-Life series Foods of the World.

Waugh is said to have invented the cocktail party when active in the 1920s London social life and served rum swizzles to astonished friends who thought they had come for tea. Within eighteen months, early evening drinks had become a widespread social entertainment.

Waugh also has a footnote in the history of reggae music. The success of the film adaptation of Island in the Sun and the Harry Belafonte title track provided inspiration as well as the name for the highly successful Island Records record label.
(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel writing from the elder brother of Evelyn Waugh, covering a selection of his travels as a young man in 1926-29, here republished (unaltered except for the foreword) in 1948. Primarily Tahiti and Martinique, with sidelines in Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Haiti and Vanuatu (Siam, Malaya, Ceylon, Haiti and New Hebrides, as they were known then!).

In the new foreword, the author states Travel in those years was pleasant, easy and cheap. Railways and steamship lines had recently made accessible a number of out-of-the-way places that a few years earlier could only be reached with great difficulty and considerable financial cost, while the aeroplane had not yet brought them within range of the nine day vacationist. There were no currency regulations then. There was no trouble with visas. Ships were not crowded. You could always get a cabin to yourself.
The contemporary reader of the book may well imagine me to have been a wealthy person. Far from it. I had no private income and was earning with my pen under twelve hundred pounds a year. But in June 1926 I was able to buy from the Messageries Maritimes a round-the-world ticket that included four months of first class accommodation for £163. During a five months' trip in the West Indies I spent under £400. To a fiction writer like myself who had no ties, who could carry his office with him, world travel offered not only glamour, romance, adventure, what you will, but a practical and economical solution of many problems of livelihood. I was lucky to have been born when I was. I had access to a great deal of fun during the years when I was most capable of enjoying it.
Today, of course, that is all over. The world is divided into zones. There are currency regulations, visa problems, and a lack of transport. Passages can only be booked with great difficulty and journeys made with great discomfort. Every hotel in the world is overcrowded. It will be many years before free and light-hearted travel is possible again.

He goes on to say he had considered updating the text for this edition, but so much had changed in the intervening 20 years and that today in 1947, in a world so different that we might be existing on another planet, I thought it better to offer Hot Countries to a new generation of reader frankly as a period piece, unaltered as I wrote it, a picture of a way of living that exists no longer.

When I read the foreword, of which I reproduced over half, I imagined I would really enjoy this book. It really started a a five star book, then after Martinique, I think lost its way a little and devolved to a 3.5 star book. Because of the bits I really enjoyed, I have stuck with 4 stars.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first, I was a bit bored by the opening chapter in Tahiti focusing on the relationships between local wonen and white men... OK, very bored. Then he moves on to other places such as Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and the West Indies, where I give him credit for delivering a strong sense of place: You Are There.

Haiti proved a rather odd chapter in that his descriptions of conditions in the 1920's when the country was an economic colony of the USA eerily paralleled descriptions of the Belgian Congo in the 50's, with unfortunate results in each case.

It's really 2.5 stars, but rounded down as it's a book about the experiences of a privileged white man written for other privileged white readers. I'm going to draw the line at using the term "racist" but if others do, I'm not challenging them.

I'm not sorry I bought a copy, but Your Mileage May Vary. A. Y. O. R. indeed!

[Molly Mccombs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely birthday gift from a friend. The Lynd Ward woodcuts are fabulous and temper Alec Waugh's stiff upper lip: his attitudes towards the various "hot" countries he visited taught me almost as much about the British Empire and the British attitude towards race and colonization as Brendon's history of the British Empire (in my "read" list). Also gives one great pause when as of 1930, Waugh declared that Tahiti had been ruined! The aspect of the book I found most interesting is that it should create nostalgia for a more elegant traveling time—but the author's racial politics completely negate any feelings of that sort (and his attitudes towards women too). And even tho' Tahiti was over some 85 years ago—think I'd rather visit now than then. So there you have it.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only a way of travel that no longer exists, but a way of writing that is also unfortunately disappearing... a wonderful read in the tradition of the best English travellers-writers