Work Suspended and other stories including Basil Seal Rides Again

by Evelyn Waugh

Includes stories such as - Mr Loveday's Little Outing; Cruise; Period Piece; On Guard; An Englishman's Home; Excursion in Reality; Bella Fleace Gave a Party; Winner Takes All; Work Suspended; Scott-King's Modern Europe; Basil Seal Rides Again; and Charles Ryder's Schooldays.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Satire, Literary Fiction, Humor

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.”

In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an apprentice cabinet maker and journalist, he wrote and had published his first novel, “Decline and Fall” in 1928.

In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.

During the thirties Waugh produced one gem after another. From this decade come: “Vile Bodies” (1930), “Black Mischief” (1932), the incomparable “A Handful of Dust” (1934) and “Scoop” (1938). After the Second World War he published what is for many his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited,” in which his Catholicism took centre stage. “The Loved One” a scathing satire of the American death industry followed in 1947. After publishing his “Sword of Honour Trilogy” about his experiences in World War II - “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955), “Unconditional Surrender" (1961) - his career was seen to be on the wane. In fact, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1963) - his last published novel - received little critical or commercial attention.

Evelyn Waugh, considered by many to be the greatest satirical novelist of his day, died on 10 April 1966 at the age of 62.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_W...

Reviews

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

One story in and it's definitely worth it.

ETA: Ok, I stalled out for awhile in the middle of Scott-King's Europe, but have rallied and finished.

For some reason I wasn't expecting Martha Gellhorn to show up in the middle of an Evelyn Waugh book. And why not? He put practically everybody else in early 20th century Europe into his books.

I have been veering steadily away from my previous "I hate short stories ugh ugh" stance and toward a new "hey, short stories are pretty good when they're good, like everything else in the world" position. This definitely gave me another nudge in that direction.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

BBC R4 - Evelyn Waugh's 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing'
Adapted by Jonathon Holloway
Directed by David Hunter
Broadcast July 30, 1998
Coded from tape at 128/44.1

Roald Dahl type comedy chiller

An apparantly sane assylum inmate is released.

Two hours later he returns for good.

Cast
Mr. Loveday - Ian Masters
Lady Moping - Barbara Leigh-Hunt
Lord Moping - James Taylor
Angela - Charlotte Attenborough
Doctor Browne - Tom Smith
Doctor Black - David Antrobus
Sir Roderick - David Timpson
McKay - Stephen Thorne

[David Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never come across an Evelyn Waugh I can't recommend. This is no exception. Short stories make good read-aloud fare.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a lot of toffery going on here.

At first I thought I basically just had some slightly extended and rather less acerbic Saki on my hands, which merited no more than three stars, though it was amusing enough.

Then I came to the novella“Work Suspended”, which was not only very funny in places, but also quite beautiful, exploring how a writer of detective novels coped with the aftermath of his father’s death on the eve of the Second World War. Comfort and self-possession overcome and undone, but neither excessive nor wallowy, and psychological depth was mingled with social insight.

The extras in this edition were “Charles Ryder’s Schooldays”, which I guess you have to be a Waughvian or at least someone who has read Brideshead Revisited to truly appreciate — I found it a rather depressing and tedious exposition of pettiness and snobbery being put through their paces among the young, unredeemed by its brief flashes of morality or aesthetics — “Basil Seal Rides Again”, which was rather witty and enjoyable, a polished piece of self-parody, and “Scott-Knight’s Modern Europe”, which was fabulous.

[Teaspoon Stories · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised to discover that this book wasn’t a novel but a collection of nine short stories of which the last one is called “Work Suspended”. But I didn’t mind my own work being suspended while I read the eight stories leading up to the one that lends its name to the collection, as they all turned out to be equally amusing, intriguing, smartly written and often curiously prescient.


Mr Loveday’s Little Outing

Eighty years after it was first published I can see why people today might frown at this short story set in a mental hospital.

We like to think we’re enlightened and non-judgemental. Mental health isn’t something we make jokes about, even tongue-in-cheek or ironically. We’re especially careful about the language we use, so that some of the words in this short story - though entirely of their time - may seem jarring to us now.

But though words may offend us, ideas shouldn’t. And the idea behind this story is entirely positive about mental health challenges. The gentle humour turns on the conceit that it can sometimes seem quite hard to distinguish between so-called normal and so-called madness. Everyone’s really a little bit, erm, different. So where exactly does charming eccentricity turn into psychopathic criminality?

There’s also some lovely class-based humour in this story with Waugh poking fun at the aristocratic Moping family. Lady Moping is entirely unfazed by her husband’s attempted suicide but appalled that it should happen “in front of the Chester-Martins” (p14).

Meanwhile her no-nonsense daughter, the Hon Angela, is so self-confident, entitled and well connected that she’s able to brow-beat the serried forces of the Establishment into releasing a psychopathic murderer on the basis that he’s such a sweet little man. Or at least, she thought so …


Cruise

This short story actually made me snort with laughter. It takes the form of a series of posts from a self-absorbed young person on a Mediterranean cruise. Only because this is 1932, the posts aren’t on social media. They’re a bunch of letters and postcards.

But you really wouldn’t think this was something from over ninety years ago. The style and content is as lively and apt today as ever.

Written in telegraphic prose, entirely unpunctuated, the erratic and slangy messages to a BFF at home reveal a great deal about a self-preoccupied twenty-something more interested in cocktails and eligible men than in the ancient cultures she’s passing through (“Postcards: This is a photograph of the Holyland and the famous Sea of Gallillee. It is all v Eastern with camels. This is the Sphinx. Goodness how Sad.” p24).

It reminded me a lot of Anita Loos’ scatty but dead-serious fortune hunters, Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw. I don’t know whether it’s chilling or heartwarming that people have changed so little over a hundred years …


Period Piece

The period piece in question is the antique Lady Amelia whose little weakness is an exotic taste for racy novels. But once she starts reminiscing to her paid companion, the stories she tells about her aristocratic friends and family are saltier than any fiction.

These colourful posh folk have the kind of names that only cheeky Waugh could make up, such as Viola Chasm, Billy Cornphillip and the Lockejaws. Another characteristically Waugh feature is his use of elegant and epigrammatic turns of phrase such as:

- “Women of my age always devote themselves either to religion or to novels” (p32).

- “It is a very sad thing when a middle-aged man becomes obsessed by a grievance” (p37).

- “You couldn’t write about the things which actually happen. People are so used to novels that they would not believe them” (p33).


On Guard

I thought this might be a tale of swordsmanship. But it’s Millicent Blade’s doggie that stands on guard in the story, not a fencing duellist.

The doggie is a poodle given to Millicent as a leaving present by an enamoured young man who she pretty much forgets about, as soon as he’s aboard the steamer to make his fortune in Keen-yah. The dog’s called Hector - the same name as the chap that Millicent’s forgotten all about.

Canine Hector is a lot more loyal to his forgotten namesake than Millicent is. And Hector develops a whole range of naughty behaviours to drive away the suitors attracted to the newly single Millicent.

To be fair, Millicent isn’t that bothered by the new chaps, either, and remains enchanted by ferociously loyal Hector - even when he bites off her nose. Hector had realised that it was Millicent’s pretty retroussé nose that attracted the menfolk. Her new strikingly “Roman” beak fashioned by the plastic surgeon attracts no male suitors at all and reassures Hector of Millicent’s undivided love and attention forever.


An Englishman’s Home

Here’s another short story that could have been written specifically about our own times and concerns. The well-heeled and influential residents of a charming little village in the Cotswolds fight tooth and limb to prevent the building of new houses locally.

Intriguingly this story was written back in 1939. There’s nothing new in the world, not even NIMBYism.

Oh, and even more familiar sounding, the residents who are most incensed by the new building are all themselves bossy newcomers to the village, who in just a few years have taken charge of everything from the village flowerbeds to the scouts.

But the fact they’re newcomers themselves in no way inhibits their sense of grievance at the prospect of new build in “their” village: “Build. It was a word so hideous that no one in Much Malcock dared use it above a whisper. ‘Housing scheme,’ ‘Development,’ ‘Clearance,’ ‘Council houses,’ Planning’ - these obscene words had been expunged from the polite vocabulary of the district” (p66).

A very expensive scheme is devised to buy off the property developer. Instead of workers’ bungalows and a light-industrial unit (yuk), the outraged villagers pull off a clever plan to acquire the field themselves for a scout hut.

The heavy cost is worth it, especially when the two who contribute the most to the devious scheme secure for themselves not only an over-priced piece of land but also public-benefactor status in the form of the scout hut being named after them. Oh, the power of new money.

Only it’s old money that has the last laugh. We know exactly where Waugh’s sympathies lie with his final twist to the story. It turns out that the NIMBY villagers have been scammed by a bogus property developer who’s actually an impoverished aristocrat running the fraud to prop up his own ancestral estate. Priceless.


Excursion in Reality

A talented but impecunious young writer, Simon Lent, is taken up by a flamboyant film mogul, Sir James Macrae, who wants to make Shakespeare more accessible for the movie-going public. It’s a ninety-year old version of the story of Netflix paying through the nose for the rights to a worthy Booker Prize winner, squandering a fortune on production, and then dropping the project as entirely unsuited for box office.


Bella Fleace Gave a Party

The eponymous Bella Fleace is a rickety eighty-something, the last in line of the eccentric Rochfort-Doyle-Fleace family. She lives in dilapidated squalor in the ruins of her impoverished rural Irish estate. Waugh poignantly and memorably explains this disintegration: “The Fleaces just got unobtrusively poorer in the way that families do who make no effort to help themselves” (p103).

But when a fortune-hunting relative discovers priceless first editions in her library, she covertly sells them to fund a magnificent once-in-lifetime party. I relished the ironic response to her mad caprice: “Indeed!” said her butler. “And for what would you want to be dancing at your age?” But as Bella adumbrated her idea, a sympathetic light began to glitter in Riley’s eye (p107).

The only problem is that Bella uses prehistoric social directories and ancient personal knowledge to draw up her guest list. And so no one comes to her ball. I got quite choked up at Waugh’s potently telegraphic description of the realisation of Bella’s disappointment: “It struck eight. Bella waited. Nobody came” (p110).

She dines alone on quail and champagne in a vast ball-room quite bare apart from glittering candles, banks of chrysanthemums and twelve liveried footmen. And the following day Bella’s dead.


Winner Takes All

This tale might equally be called Two Brothers. They’re Gervase and Tom Kent-Cumberland. And because I’m learning now that Evelyn Waugh rarely writes about anyone who doesn’t have pints of blue blood coursing through their veins, Gervase and Tom are the scions of the ancient, aristocratic and bizarrely named House of Tomb.

But because Gervase is the older of the two by two years, he’s the only one who matters. Really, really matters. Even more so, when their father, remote and unloved, is killed in action during World War One. And Gervase is now suddenly the supreme master of the Tomb world, while Tom is just the poor benighted spare.

Not that Tom bears a grudge. Ever. In the least. He’s only ever known life as the uncherished and unimportant younger brother. And his relationship with his older brother has been constantly amiable, practical and subservient from their days in the nursery, when the shiny red pedal-car that had so captured little Tom’s heart was casually re-gifted to Gervase who didn’t even want it.

And so Gervase is launched on a gilded path of Eton, Oxford and High Society, while disregarded Tom works as a mechanic in Wolverhampton before being shipped out to Australia to make his own way.

I was willing there to be a final twist in the story that would see down-trodden, second-best Tom being rewarded at last for his lifetime of patient, good-natured endurance. And there is a final twist. But one that rewards Gervase yet again - Gervase with the looks, the charm, the money, and now the girl too. And it’s Tom’s girl. Grrrr. Bloody families.


Work Suspended

This is the final short story in this collection and it gives its name to the book. It’s actually more like a novella than a short story and it’s the length of the preceding eight short stories all together.

The story is narrated in the first person by a chap whose surname (Plant) we only finally get to know on page 168. His first name (John) is inadvertently revealed on page 185. We piece together that he’s single, in his early thirties, and has made a successful career out of writing clever “literary” detective stories (though his father enjoys riling his son by saying that “he writes penny dreadfuls for a living” p145).

So this brings us to the narrator’s father. While the narrator is working in Morocco on his eighth novel he learns of his father’s death back in London, killed crossing the road.

The narrator’s work - and his way of life - is suspended, as he sets out on a journey of grief (“My sense of loss became tangible and permanent … grief overtook and overwhelmed me” p165). But also reminiscence, reflection and re-evaluation. As well as a growing obsession with the pregnant wife of his best friend.

We slowly start forming a picture of the narrator’s father - and of their father-son relationship. His father was an old-school portrait painter - a venerable member of the Establishment and the Royal Academy. Rather rakishly, though, he made his real money by painting fakes of the Old Masters for a (not so) respectable Mayfair Gallery.

I was struck by the similarities between the narrator’s remote and eccentric father in this story and Charles Ryder’s impish and rather sly father in “Brideshead Revisited” (exquisitely played by John Gielgud in the iconic 1981 tv adaptation). The narrator calls it “the aloofness that was his dominant concern in life” (p146).

In fact, aloof fathers seem to be a recurring feature in Waugh’s writing, along with the themes of eccentricity, the decline of the aristocracy and disintegration generally.

These sober preoccupations don’t mean, however, that there’s no humour in this story. On the contrary, the writing is seasoned with irony and gentle wit. I was especially tickled, for example, by:

- The lugubrious doings of the Jellabies, the narrator’s father’s rapacious but loyal housekeeper and butler (p143).

- The wife and six children that the narrator invents for himself to try to impress Fatima at the bordello he visits in Fez (p158).

- The narrator’s chum Roger Simmonds, posh, self-entitled and impecunious, who “had lately married an unknown heiress, joined the Socialist Party, and become generally conventional” (p169).


And then there’s the sheer elegance of Waugh’s prose. Here, for example, is a gorgeously spun sentence, wistful and whimsical, rooted practically yet metaphorical, that perfectly encapsulates for me Waugh’s style, sensibility and preoccupations:

“As a spinster in mean lodgings fusses over her fragments of gentility - a rosewood work-box, a Spode plate, a crested tea-kettle - which in a house of abundance would be risked in the rough and tumble of general use, I set a price on Modesty which those of ampler virtues might justly regard as fanciful” (p160).


Work in the form of the narrator’s novel-writing is suspended throughout the story at first on account of his father’s death, then due to the break-up of his family home, and finally because of the distraction of Lucy and her pregnancy.

But the postscript reminds us that it’s not just the narrator’s work that’s about to be suspended yet again. It’s his life too, or at least, his life as he knows it. And not just temporarily suspended. The outbreak of the Second World War is about to change everything for everyone, forever.

And so we realise it’s Evelyn Waugh himself, and not his fictional narrator, John Plant, who’s putting away the writing pad in the final sentence, not knowing if or when he’ll ever be writing novels again. I found that pretty powerful …

[Dr G · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fairly obscure collection of some of Evelyn Waugh’s shorter fiction. It came to my attention when I found that Waugh had written a partial prequal to Brideshead Revisited , Charles Ryder’s Schooldays , and went searching for it. Since I regard Brideshead as amongst Waugh’s best writing and found Charles an interesting character, I thought it would be entertaining to see how the author envisioned the younger Charles.
Overall, the collection did not offer me much, though. There are eleven other pieces as well as the Charles Ryder.
“Mr Loveday’s Little Outing” is amusing in a Roald Dahl unpleasant-ending type of way. “Cruise” has some amusing character portraits but is flimsy. “Period Piece” is a diverting portrait of Lady Amelia, a type from the early 20th century, the portrait coming entirely from her own foolish words. Satirically it is probably much less effective than it would have been at the time, but one can still admire Waugh’s caustic precision.
“On Guard” has some writing which might be considered typical Waugh, although at times it does lack economy and editing: “But the feature which, more than any other, endeared her to sentimental Anglo-Saxon manhood was her nose./ It was not everybody’s nose; many prefer one with greater body; it was not a nose to appeal to painters, for it was far too small and quite without shape, a mere dab of putty without apparent bone structure; a nose which made it impossible for its wearer to be haughty or imposing or astute. It would not have done for a governess or a ’cellist or even for a post office clerk, but it suited Miss Blade’s book perfectly, for it was a nose that pierced the thin surface crest of the English heart to its warm and pulpy core; a nose to take the thoughts of English manhood back to its schooldays, to the doughy-faced urchins on whom it had squandered its first affection, to memories of changing room and chapel and battered straw boaters. Three Englishman in five, it is true, grow snobbish about these things in later life and prefer a nose that makes more show in public – but two in five is an average with which any girl of modest fortune may be reasonably content.”
The anthropomorphic treatment of the dog, Hector (there is also a human Hector) as he tries to manage Amelia’s romances is probably the strongest part of the story. The dog “found a carrion in the park and conscientiously rolled in it – although such a thing was obnoxious to his nature – and, returning, fouled every chair in the drawing-room;” There are other clever features as well.
“An Englishman’s Home” is mildly amusing, about a group of self-assured, self-centred bourgeois landowners in a salubrious area, as they are bettered by a developer. The characters are well-enough drawn but the plot is slight.
I am not sure what “Excursion in Reality” was ultimately about: the vicissitudes of being a writer? The transience of the film industry? It contained little real humour, the characters were boring, and the purpose unclear.
“Bella Fleace Gave a Party” was slightly odd with a final twist which was not all that much of a twist. Bella was a quirky eccentric but not interesting enough to carry the story. “Winner Takes All” was a faintly amusing story of an aristocratic mother who organises her family minutely. The twist at the end was apparent from some time off. The mother was reasonably entertaining, the other characters barely visible.
“Work Suspended” was more interesting. It was interesting that the father-son relationship had clear echoes of Charles Ryder and his father: “as an occasional visitor I strained and upset my father’s household… ‘My dear boy,’ he would say on my first evening, ‘Please do not misunderstand me. I hope you will stay as long as you possibly can, but I do wish to know whether you will still be here on Thursday the 14th, and if so whether you will be in to dinner.’ So I took to staying at my club or with more casual hosts”. From time to time, there was a pretty piece of writing, Lucy is a fan of the protagonist’s writing: “‘ My word, this is exciting,’ said Julia, and settled down to enjoy me as though I were a box of chocolates open on her knees.” And, “‘It’s extraordinary,’ he said. ‘I’ve got absolutely no feeling about this baby at all. I kept telling myself all these last months that when I actually saw it, all manner of deep-rooted, atavistic emotions would come surging up. I was all set for a deep spiritual experience. They brought the thing in and showed it to me. I looked at it and waited – and nothing at all happened. It was just like the first time one takes hashish – or being ‘confirmed’ at school.’”
I was disconcerted that the narrative point of view seemed to drift at times from conventional first person to an illogical omniscience.
The story’s Postscript has a definite Brideshead feel to it. “Neither book – the last of my old life, the first of my new – was ever finished. As for my house, I never spent a night there. It was requisitioned, filled with pregnant women, through five years bit by bit befouled and dismembered. My friends were dispersed. Lucy and her baby moved back to her aunt’s. Roger rose from department to department in the office of Political Warfare. Basil sought and found a series of irregular adventures. For myself playing regimental soldiering proved an orderly and not disagreeable way of life./I met Atwater several times in the course of the war – the Good-scout of the officer’s club, the Under-dog in the transit camp, the Dreamer lecturing troops about post-war conditions. He was reunited, it seemed, with all his legendary lost friends, he prospered and the Good-scout predominated. Today, I believe, he holds sway over a large area of Germany. No one of my close acquaintance was killed, but all our lives, as we had constructed them, quietly came to an end. Our story, like my novel, remained unfinished – a heap of neglected foolscap at the back of a drawer.”
“Scott-king’s Modern Europe” is a moderately satisfying story, the first part being a mild satire of a character typical in certain schools half a century ago, a self-enclosed, almost monomaniacal classics teacher; the second part moves away to satirise nations which might or might not have been typical in the Balkans at around the same time. Some of the satire works quite well.
“Or the Rake’s Regress” seemed a rather pointless exercise to bring together two of Waugh’s characters from other works, Peter Pastmaster and Basil Seal. Much of the story is set in the sort of wealthy sanatorium just then becoming popular amongst the classes with too much money; the rest dabbles in modern young people’s entertainment of the time: “happenings” and the like. This is another of the stories with a faint twist at the end, as Basil plays a trick to frustrate his daughter’s romance plans. Dreary reading, I’m afraid.
“Charles Ryder’s Schooldays” is quite interesting as an account of Charles’s middle years at school. If taken as a prelude to Brideshead Revisited, it gives some extra depth to Charles in ways not really suggested by the novel. However, very few readers of Brideshead would read it, certainly not before reading the novel. On its own, it is an interesting enough account of an adolescent’s time at an English public school, although its protagonist could as easily have been given a different name. It rather feels as though Waugh was capitalizing on the success of the novel.
Charles is presented as a quite dark but artistic, impenetrable and reclusive individual who is just starting to make independent decisions about how to behave. He has been passed over for a leadership role in his house and effects to be unconcerned. He is unpleasant to one who was chosen and rejects both that boy’s and the housemaster’s requests to support him. The story is replete with arcane public school jargon; it has a little of the feel of his brother, Alec Waugh’s Loom of Youth .
As is probably apparent from my over-use of “mildly” and “amusing”, this book is not one I would recommend to anyone looking for reading with some depth. It is a divertissement.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe I have a bit of an odd edition, an old hardcover one (1949) containing the following stories:

- Mr. Loveday's Little Outing
- Cruise
- Period Piece
- On Guard
- An Englishman's Home
- Excursion in Reality
- Bella Fleace Gave a Party
- Winner Takes All
- Work Suspended

Out of all of them, I enjoyed the really short ones the best, like Cruise, and didn't like the longest one, Work Suspended, so much.
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed these and how funny I found them as I previously didn't get on with Waugh at all (I read Vile Bodies and found it, well, vile). I would definitely recommend this to readers who are new to Waugh.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of Waugh's short fiction is slight but entertaining. Most of the stories are sketches - about 12 pages long, ending with a nasty twist - which starts to get formulaic. The title work, which at 90 pages is more of a novella, is more fully fleshed out and easily the best part of this collection.

[PPEsquire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice way to get acquainted to Waugh with these early career short stories. Witty, dark humour on the obsession of upper-class characters to keep up appearances above all else.

Work suspended is maybe the only work foreshadowing Waugh’s Brideshead, with a more melancholic touch and deeper reflection on how disconnected from real life these characters are.

[Elias Ferros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some first rate short stories and two painfully short excerpts of unfinished novels. There isn’t always the greatest amount of polish and sometimes the writing is a little boring at times but there’s a lot which is first rate packed in here. The short stories are quite clever and amusing, Winner Takes All gives a brilliant albeit fictional insight into Waughs relationship with his brother as a child. Scott Kings Modern Europe was a little boring for me in the middle but still acts as a brilliant thought piece on the modern world and education. The two masterpieces here are Work Suspended and Charles Ryder’s Schooldays it was a matter of extreme sadness to me that both these beginnings never grew into whole novels because they are so so beautiful and interesting. Charles Ryder’s Schooldays is a backdrop to Brideshead and begins to explain the Charles who steps into the beginning of that novel, especially the circumstances leading to the deficiencies he has as a character - coldness and emptiness in particular as well as the growth of his artistic faculties. Work Suspended shows Waughs first effort to write an explicitly Catholic work and it is masterful. A deliberate sense of dryness, emptiness and disillusion with the modern world permeates the work which creates the space for religion to enter the novel. One can see many of the ideas of Brideshead already at play here.

[Calum Orr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is a sentence or two on each story (or what I can remember of them):

Mr Loveday's Little Outing: 6/10
Jolly fun, mildly criminal. Dahlian.

Cruise 8/10
Short epistolary comic lark of postcard returning from a cruise ship.

Period Piece 5/10
And old dear relays a story of inheritance which has not stayed with me well.

On Guard 6/10
The dog and the nose, a cautionary tale. Mildly amusing

An Englishman's Home 7/10
Planning, class, envy and pride in the Cotswolds. Dahlian.

Bella Fleace Gave a Party 6/10
The story of a sad old dear.

Winner Takes All 6/10
Vaguely morose and slightly heartening.

Work Suspended 7/10
Well told, serious: love, death, and eccentric fathers. Would love to have read the finished work.

Scott-King's Modern Europe 9/10
Classic Waugh comic romp - invented country, adventure on the high seas, all-as-not-as-it-seems characters. Redolent of Scoop.

[Alec]

#2
This is the Sphinx. Goodness how Sad.

#5
‘That field has always been known as Lower Grumps,’ said the Colonel, reverting to his former and doubly offensive line of thought. ‘It's not really her chicken.’
‘It is all our chickens,’ said Mr Metcalfe, getting confused with the metaphor.

#7
‘Indeed!’ said her butler. ‘And for what would you want to be dancing at your age?’ But as Bella adumbrated her idea, a sympathetic light began to glitter in Riley's eye.

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Work Suspended is a novella of about 100 pages, and contains some distinctly strange characters, to whom I couldn't warm at all.

The other stories in this collection are all much shorter, and I found many of them to be quite odd, particularly On Guard and Excursion in Reality. But I enjoyed reading Evelyn Waugh again, especially as I had not come across this volume before.

[Rich Lambert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun mix of short and mid length stories that hits all the tropes of Waugh. Much more of a fan of the longer stuff which just gave you more time to savour the humour so big yeses to Work Suspended and Scott-King's Modern Europe. Of The shorter ones I liked Charles Ryder's Schooldays most though possibly because it was separate from the others so felt more unique idk. Not necessarily a book I'd recommend unless you enjoy Waugh but good stuff if you do

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent - just like his novels in short form. “Work Suspended” is more like Brideshead Revisited, and the other title story is just like the two previous basil seal novels. Would have loved another collection to get through, but I suppose rereading Waugh’s novels is good enough.

[David Hollywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Evelyn Waugh's writings, and he never disappoints.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real mixed bag. Some of the shorter stories are a bit too pat. The longer ones make up for it with ambition and interest.

[Angharad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly funny and silly short stories. Stick to the Basil Seal and avoid the Scott-King.

[Dais · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed bag. I find I enjoy Waugh more the less funny he is trying to be. Sick to death of hearing about Lady Metroland.

[Antek · Rating 3 out of 5]

POST-CARD
"This is the Sphinx. Goodness how Sad."

[Charissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The shorter the short story, the more I loved it. The shortest were at the start, and so past-me excitably recommended the book to anyone who’d listen. The longer of the stories began about a third of the way through and from then on it was more of a slog; perhaps because Waugh’s characters are intentionally vapid, selfish, and/or unfeeling and so one doesn’t want to spend too much time in their company. That being said, there were still some thoroughly splendid moments scattered throughout the second two thirds. Five stars for the first third, three and a half stars for the rest, which equals four overall.

[Robert Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The longer-form stories are very well written and develop aspects of well-known characters (Charles Ryder; Basil Seal) in interesting ways. The standout story from a purely creative perspective is ‘Scott-King’s Modern Europe’ - an allegorical tale of an English schoolmaster’s trip abroad to the fictional state of Neutralia. The shorter stories felt that they lacked the depth of the longer-form stories and, whilst they were pleasant enough to read, didn’t leave the same lasting impression.

[David Fulmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume contains some stories by Waugh. They brim with comedy, charm, wit, and a huge, edifying vocabulary. Unfortunately I delayed writing a review of the book for too long after I read it to give a very complete account of it but I remember that it was full of all the things I love about Waugh.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

Mr. Loveday's little outing --3
*Cruise
Period piece
*On guard
An Englishman's home--part of Put Out More Flags
*Excursion in reality
Bella Fleace gave a party --3
Winner takes all
Work suspended--not read
Scott-King's modern Europe (aka Sojourn in neutralia)
*Basil Seal rides again
Charles Ryder's schooldays
***
Manager of the Kremlin --2
Tactical exercise --3

[Thevogon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories fills out space left in an unfinished novel first published during the war when the author was otherwise engaged. Luckily, the novel is essentially two short stories with connected characters, so it all fits together very well. You can sense the changes in style over the dozen years, with his different post-war works ahead.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not a big reader of short stories, but I throughly enjoyed this collection. For many of the short stories the payoff was clear from early on, but Waugh writes so well that it really didn’t matter to me.

[Su-Lin Lye · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Charles Ryder's Schooldays, and one other short story which I did not enjoy, and Charles more for the memories than anything else. I'm always greedy for more details of characters I've loved.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a big fan of satire in general - I don't enjoy the constant picking on weaknesses - but Waugh's writing is excellent.

[M a thilde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. Some of the shorter stories, like cruise, were good but by and large these were unexceptional

[Victoria Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic writing, very funny.