Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family

by Alexander Waugh

If there is a literary gene, then the Waugh family most certainly has it—and it clearly seems to be passed down from father to son. The first of the literary Waughs was Arthur, who, when he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford in 1888, broke with the family tradition of medicine. He went on to become a distinguished publisher and an immensely influential book columnist. He fathered two sons, Alec and Evelyn, both of whom were to become novelists of note (and whom Arthur, somewhat uneasily, would himself publish); both of whom were to rebel in their own ways against his bedrock Victorianism; and one of whom, Evelyn, was to write a series of immortal novels that will be prized as long as elegance and lethal wit are admired. Evelyn begat, among seven others, Auberon Waugh, who would carry on in the family tradition of literary skill and eccentricity, becoming one of England’s most incorrigibly cantankerous and provocative newspaper columnists, loved and loathed in equal measure. And Auberon begat Alexander, yet another writer in the family, to whom it has fallen to tell this extraordinary tale of four generations of scribbling male Waughs.

The result of his labors is Fathers and Sons , one of the most unusual works of biographical memoir ever written. In this remarkable history of father-son relationships in his family, Alexander Waugh exposes the fraught dynamics of love and strife that has produced a succession of successful authors. Based on the recollections of his father and on a mine of hitherto unseen documents relating to his grandfather, Evelyn, the book skillfully traces the threads that have linked father to son across a century of war, conflict, turmoil and change. It is at once very, very funny, fearlessly candid and exceptionally moving—a supremely entertaining book that will speak to all fathers and sons, as well as the women who love them.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, History, British Literature, Biography Memoir, Autobiography

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Alexander Evelyn Michael Waugh (born 1963) is an English eccentric, businessman, writer, critic, journalist, composer, cartoonist, record producer and television presenter. He is best known for his biography of the Wittgenstein family (The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War) published in 2009.

He was a founding director and Chairman of Xebras Management Ltd, the now-dissolved digital media company. He has also served on the boards of Concert Agency, Manygate Management Ltd, and of the award winning Travelman Publishing Ltd. He is currently an independent Non-Executive Director of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc and Chairman of the Remuneration Committee.

Reviews

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, this book just rocks.

It's different from what you'd think. It's funny--really funny--rather than the ponderous 'my family has been important for generations' tome it could have been. Two examples will illustrate how quirky--in the best possible sense--the book was.

First, according to the author, one of the family's most proud accomplishments was that an ancestor 'cured Queen Victoria's wind'--Waughs cured the queen's farts! A letter from one of the Queen's staff to the Waugh ancestor confirms the fact, tactfully.

Second, the author (Alexander) recalls an incident when, after he'd been thrown over by a girl, he stormed around the house, loudly resolving never to have a thing to do with women again. Panicked, his mother Theresa decided this meant he'd decided to be a homosexual. She informed his father, Auberon, called Bron by the family. Bron called Alexander into the study, and explained, "The anus is designed for the explusion of fecal matter. It is not designed for the insertion of foreign objects, no matter how lovingly placed there."

Alexander said he left the study in tears of laughter.

This is the book in a nutshell; since the late 19th century, the Waugh name has been an important name in British letters. Arthur Waugh, not the first important Waugh but the first author, started a "string" whose decendents include four generations who have made their living from writing, and whose output includes more than 180 books.

And yet, despite all that, Alexander is most proud the family was of service in relieving the Queen of her farts.

You also learn about fathers and sons, and the influence, directly or indirectly, that one person will have on several generations of decendants.

You have to love a book like that.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad that I enjoyed this book - I was starting to feel that I was too cranky to ever enjoy non-fiction again. But this is a great book - one of the best I’ve read this year. Anyway, this book is biography/memoir of a literary family - Alexander Waugh writes the story of his famous literary family. He is a music/science writer, his father, Auberon Waugh was a famous cantankerous columnist in England, his grandfather, of course the famous novelist Evelyn Waugh. Plus, his great uncle was a a novelist, Alec, and his great-grandfather Arthur was bathetic Victorian poet/writer. That is interesting enough, to read about how they all became writers, but even more interesting is the relationships therein - they were all crazy, crazy fathers. Arthur basically worshipped Alec to the point of creepiness and treated Evelyn like a second class citizen. Evelyn showed little to no interest in Auberon. Auberon was a pretty decent father - as far as stiff upper lip English go, and Alexander (our author) is trying his darndest to do better by his own sons.

The book isn’t whiny or self-pitying - rather it is a crisp and witty account of a crazy family (the witty writing gene has definitely been passed from Evelyn down to his grandsons). It read like the best fiction - smart, funny and even better, true. If you like Waugh, or crazy families (and I like both), you’ll love this.

[Dr G · Rating 3 out of 5]

They are a strange mob, the Waughs! I had not known much about them but Alexander’s “autobiography of a family” presents all three generations – and a few earlier ones to set the scene for Evelyn’s arrival. The book is really more about Evelyn and his son Auberon (Alexander’s father), and less about Alexander, and certainly not about Alexander’s offspring.
Alexander, incidentally, died in July of this year, 2024, at age sixty, after Auberon had died at sixty-one and Evelyn at sixty-two.
Early deaths are not all the three had in common; they shared a dominant gene of asperity, and apparently a void where the gene of empathy might have been. If there is information available, it is published regardless of how hurtful it might be. There is a sometimes stated and sometimes implied belief that children will be better prepared for the real world if they are spared an excess of praise or solicitude (where “excess” means anything greater than zero). This is shared by all three of the men as fathers.
After beginning with an account of Auberon’s death (“No. That is not Papa, just a gruesome remnant”), Alexander moves back to “my great-great grandfather, a disagreeable Dr Waugh, with a sadistic attitude to his sons” who was known in the family as “The Brute”, although christened Alexander. The Brute frequently whipped his children and his dogs, and sought to toughen his nervous son Arthur by subjecting him to terrifying experiences, such as leaving him sitting alone on a high tree branch for hours. Arthur would be Alexander’s great grandfather, and Alexander regards his occasional writing with disdain, referring at one point to “a staggeringly fatuous article” he had written, and at another to “the feeblest, the most inane and the most irredeemably second-rate paragraph that any man has yet committed to the pages of an autobiography. From that moment Arthur Waugh was marked in my mind as a twerp and I was ashamed to be his descendant.” Arthur had occasional minor success with his writing but became established as a literary critic, a newspaper correspondent and a publisher.
Arthur had two sons, five years apart, Alec and Evelyn, and it was really at that point that the story begins. The Brute’s fathering of Arthur was followed by Arthur’s fathering of Alec and Evelyn, then Evelyn’s of Auberon and Auberon’s of Alexander. Arthur’s relationship with his first son, Alec, was an almost polar opposite to what he had experienced as a child. “As the years passed, Arthur’s absorption in everything that Alec did and said came to occupy most of his waking thought, and the boy was swept along in the tide of his father’s affection.”
Arthur impulsively decided to send Alec to a prep school called Ferndale; the philosophy of boy-management there is indicated by the fact that, at 8 years old, Alec vomited into his dessert-bowl and was ordered to consume the vomit as the headmaster stood over him.
From Ferndale, Alec was sent to Sherborne, Arthur’s old school. There things seemed to be alright and Arthur, as a parent, enjoyed the school far more than he had when a student there. However, then Alec discovered, and confessed to, masturbation and the gory details of the response from both the school and Arthur are related in detail. That is closely followed by a smattering of information on Alec’s love of some younger boys, and then it culminates in Alec’s sacking from the school because of a naked game with another younger boy. And Arthur, crushed.
Arthur was expending all his love on, and identification with, Alec, so Evelyn was neglected by his father. Evelyn’s birth was apparently a disappointment as a daughter had been wanted, and the birth went badly. We are told something of this, which is the sort of material, the revelation of which serves little purpose beyond the display of Alexander’s authorial wit.
Evelyn, it seems, was devoted to his mother; Alexander reports “Adored by all who met her, she was a stoic, the humble backbone of Underhill; aloof, quiet and undemonstrative, she acted as a sponge to Arthur’s loquacious theatricality. She was shrewd and prudent, but not particularly bright. She read books uncritically, hated writing letters and was perplexed by poetry.” The profound love seems not to have been reciprocated as Alexander, grandson of the spurned victim, huffily explains.
Evelyn was not sent to Sherborne but to a lower-fee school. His character was now beginning to become apparent: “Arthur needed always to be liked, and he liked to be praised: to this end he was lavish in his compliments to others. Evelyn, on the other hand, had an advanced talent for seeing through people and was blunt in his criticism.” “His criticisms of Arthur were that he was old, boring and slightly preposterous. Arthur was thirty-seven years old at Evelyn’s birth and was grey-haired by the time that his son was old enough to form memorable opinions of him. He was also fat-bottomed, he wheezed due to his asthma and surrounded himself in ostentatious clouds of smoke. His face was red and he talked too much.”
The acid-tongue of three generations of the family is revealed in one excerpt, ostensibly about Evelyn: “he came, later on in life, to despise what he saw as Arthur’s soppy, debased brand of Christianity. My own father felt the same about love-based Christianity: “‘From St John’s revelation that God is love,’ he once wrote, ‘it has been a very short step to identify “love” with a state of vacuous euphoria involving an infantile dependence on group stimulation.’”
When Alec joined up for the 1914 war, he became depressed and Arthur blamed himself for being too indulgent: “Your dreams of life have hitherto been too self-centred. I blame myself greatly. “In those far-off days the relationship between father and son was at the peak of its intensity. To the objective eye their behaviour might have resembled a pair of star-crossed teenage lovers. ‘I simply go about thinking of your love for me all the time,’ wrote Arthur, ‘and I think the devotion is deeper since it no longer feeds itself with form-places, scores or achievements, but is just a matter of our own souls and their sweet companionship.’ And all the time there was a brooding awareness that the war might snatch it all away: ‘If you fall in this war, I have nothing more to do than creep into my narrow bed, and the sooner sleep comes, the sooner shall I be released from suffering.’ Arthur’s need for Alec’s company was hot, clammy and compulsive.”
At seventeen, still a cadet, Alec wrote a 115,000 word novel in seven and a half weeks, The Loom of Youth , about a school which was quickly identified as Sherborne. Arthur desperately hoped that it would not be published because of the way it would be seen by the school and its inhabitants, but it was. To the twenty-first century eye, it is a pretty anodyne public school story with the vaguest of allusions to possible homosexuality, but it caused a storm at the time. Alec immediately wrote another novel but this one horrified Arthur with its immorality and Alec accepted his advice not to have it published. Shortly afterwards, Alec became enamoured of a girl whom Alexander, with his Wavian pen, described: “The photograph which Alec took with him in his haversack to the trenches shows a dumpy muskrat of a girl in a white cotton dress hunched apprehensively under a tree. Her mouth is downturned and her eyes narrow.”
Alexander continues in his determination to write exactly as he sees things, with no regard for how the individual being described or descendants might be affected by them. Mention is made at this time of another girl Arthur hoped might interest Alec. Alexander makes the explosive comment that she: “was perhaps the first of Arthur’s many surrogate daughters, young women, usually in their teens, with whom he enjoyed close, intimate but, according to Evelyn, ‘in no way libidinous’ associations – I hope Grandpapa was right about this. Arthur had a tendency in any gathering to make a beeline for girls of the teen age or younger.” (My emphasis). At this stage Alexander had not been born and he would not be born until twenty years after his great grandfather’s death, so his assurance is surprising.
Alec went to war at Passchendaele, was horrified by what he encountered, wrote a poem that Alexander describes as “one of the most devastating to come out of the Great War”, and at the same time was receiving news of extremely positive reviews of his novel (although Sherborne was furious and sought to abolish father and son from school communities).
Arthur was informed that Alec was “missing in action”, causing understandably great grief. His father was displeased with Evelyn who was considered to be showing inadequate emotion in the light of his brother’s assumed death. It was then found that Alec had been taken prisoner; he spent the last part of the war as a P.O.W. On his return home he and Evelyn developed a more positive relationship. Evelyn had had some curious friendships with older men but was then taken to heterosexual brothels by Alec. However, Alec’s sexuality was also not straight-forward as he married but failed to consummate the marriage, as we are told in further vulgar and salacious disquisition.
At seventeen, Evelyn began his first novel and, whereas Alec and Arthur had gushingly dedicated books to one another, Evelyn dedicated this to himself; it was not finished, however. Evelyn was now perceiving himself as a genius. “Like many people of outstanding talent Evelyn hovered between the opposing forces of arrogance and self-loathing.” He was not a success at Oxford (“Waughs do not do well at university. Arthur got a third-class degree, so did Evelyn (a poor one at that) and so did I. My father fared even worse by failing his first-year exams and flopping out after only three terms. We all have, or had, our own excuses. There is no common theme. In Evelyn’s case it was a cocktail of drunkenness, lassitude, and raw, adolescent rebellion”).
“Apparently both brothers were given to wandering about their home pondering the idea of suicide, or at least claiming to do so.
“In later life Evelyn told a friend he was anxious that his son – my father – should not discover about his homosexual past. In 1954 he wrote to his friend Nancy Mitford: ‘I went to Oxford and visited my first homosexual love, Richard Pares, a don at All Souls.’” The fact, of course, that he wrote to Mitford about it does not mean that he expected it to have wider circulation. And we should recall that he destroyed his diaries. The online gay community is, however, seeking to enlist both Evelyn Waugh and Pares into their ranks.
There was apparently some concern that Alexander might also have been demonstrating a homosexual tendency: “My own father, who, as I have said, never had a serious conversation with me in all his life, had been told (I suspect by my mother) that a streak of misogyny had developed in me. She was right. I had recently been chucked by a girlfriend at school and was strutting about the house, vowing to have nothing to do with women for as long as I lived. I was invited into the library (a rare occurrence) to discuss the situation with my father. I knocked and entered apprehensively. He was writing, and looked pained to be reminded of the duty he had elected himself to fulfil. I stood awkwardly in front of his desk and waited for him to speak. ‘My dear boy,’ he pronounced, ‘the anus was designed for the retention and expulsion of faecal matter, not for the reception of foreign organs, however lovingly placed there.’ I left the room in tears of laughter.”
It must be said that there is a considerable amount of sexual activity, in many forms, described in this book. The oddest example relates to one Cruttwell who was Evelyn’s history tutor and Evelyn blamed him for the loss of his scholarship; “later he blocked his attempts to get a job, and did his level best to throw a spanner into the works of his first marriage. In retaliation Evelyn outed Cruttwell as a dog sodomist”. Alexander concedes “Freudian scholars of Waugh have reached the unanimous conclusion that Cruttwell was innocent of these charges, concurring, to a man, that Evelyn invented the slander in order to deflect attention from his own sexual embarrassments. I cannot agree.” Evelyn’s antagonism began when Cruttwell removed his scholarship on the apparently reasonable grounds that Waugh was doing no study, instead indulging fully in Oxford’s sybaritic pleasures. It continued for a long time, with many of his buffoon-characters in his novels being named Cruttwell.
Cruttwell ultimately died in an asylum and it is thought possible that the cruelty of Waugh’s long-lasting vendetta may well have contributed to his breakdown. The difficulty of arriving at an appreciation of Evelyn Waugh may be indicated by looking at his description of Cruttwell: “He was tall almost loutish, with the face of a petulant baby. He smoked a pipe which was usually attached to his blubber-lips by a thread of slime. As he removed the stem, waving it to emphasise his indistinct speech, this glittering connection, extended until finally it broke leaving a dribble on his chin.” As a description of a fictional character, this would be masterful writing; as a description of a live person with feelings, for me it is less impressive.
It is probably unsurprising that Evelyn seems to dominate the book. He, after all, is the Waugh who made the family famous.
Alexander shows that he can match his grandfather’s aggressive vituperative style. He writes of Evelyn’s prospective mother-in-law’s opposition to the marriage (the daughter, he says, “was intellectual, but she was also argumentative, a social snob, a sex maniac, a sado-masochist, a depressive and a drunk”): “If only Arthur had done a little research of his own he could have put the ball squarely into Lady Burghclere’s court: ‘Madam, you have no right to be snooty,’ he might have said. ‘Frankly I am appalled that my genius of a son should be marrying into such a shoddy pack as yours. I understand, madam, that your husband was a bastard, that his mother was a lowly actress and that her mother was a semi-literate thespian whose maiden name cannot even be traced. I am also informed that your brother, the Earl of Carnarvon, is not genetically responsible for all of his issue. News reaches me, too, that your eldest daughter is a cat-obsessed hermit who deserted her husband; that your second daughter is a hypochondriac lunatic who spends all her day lying on the floor in a darkened room; that your third daughter also deserted her husband, a Y-fronts salesman from Kent, in order to set up shop with a rough and ready sailor.’”
So I think that shows clearly enough that, whether it is genetic or learned behaviour, grandfather and grandson have similar capacities for nastiness, and for pride in the characteristic.
For all his much-vaunted Catholic devoutness, Evelyn was quite comfortable applying to the Curia for a rare sanctioned annulment when the marriage collapsed shortly after being celebrated.
He re-married, to Laura. “Although they were pleased to have a son, both Evelyn and Laura disliked babies. When telegrams of congratulation came in, Evelyn responded: ‘Many thanks for your telegram. The midwife speaks highly of the baby.’ In a letter to his friend Mary Lygon two days later Evelyn appears to have examined ‘it’ a little more closely: ‘Laura has had a son. Will you be its god-mother? It is to be called Auberon Alexander. It is quite big and handsome and Laura is very pleased with it.” There is the unmistakable tinge of an aesthete’s affectation to all this.
In his youth, Auberon made a mendacious accusation at school and Evelyn supported him but eventually found his son made the whole thing up. “Evelyn trusted Bron little thereafter. He was no fool. He could see that his son was a crafty, devious and slightly delinquent boy.” That is the author’s father!
Evelyn did not gain any sentimentality when his son became an adult. Auberon was on an army exercise in Cyprus when he mishandled a machine gun, causing it to fire rounds into his body. He was on the verge of death; Laura travelled out to be with him; Evelyn did not, writing to a friend: “Laura is in Cyprus with Bron. His life is very precarious. He seems to have had more than one bullet in lung and spleen. Details are wanting, but it sounds as though he will never completely recover. I shall go out to travel home with Laura if he dies.”
He lived and fathered a family but, as much as Alexander claims he became less and less like Evelyn as time went on, Auberon also eschewed sentimentality. “When he caught me meditating once on the frailties and strengths of my own personality, Papa shook his fist through the door and accused me from without of ‘wafting odious clouds of self-think’”.
Alexander obviously took the admonition to heart.
“We are all bored by our children on occasion and the world might be an easier place if we were only frank enough to admit it, but modern parents tend instead to furrow their brows, force smiles on to anxious lips and talk down in sentimental goo-goo voices that sometimes stick even after their children have grown up. This, I believe, is the way to damage children.”
It is no surprise when Alexander reports “He never called me by my real name. For the first eight or ten years of my life I was addressed simply as ‘Fat Fool’. Not that I minded. There was affection in his tone so I wore the ‘insult’ as a badge of honour. One day someone earnest must have told him to desist and ‘Fat Fool’ disappeared to be replaced with a string of names that weren’t mine: Timmy, Roge, Nige, Jockey, Wilf – anything would do so long as it did not involve him in too much thought. I don’t think he ever called me Alexander.” It is therefore also no surprise when he claims the father-son relationship never seems to work.
On my first reading of Fathers and Sons. An autobiography of a family , I found it easy and entertaining reading. As I have looked into it more closely for this review, I have come to regard it less favourably.

[Sarah Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if you're not familiar with the many literary Waughs, most of us at least recognize Evelyn Waugh, of Brideshead Revisited fame. In this autobiography, Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn Waugh, describes the legacy and complicated father and son relationships that litter his family tree. Beginning with The Brute (his great-great grandfather) down through his own son Auberon, Alexander Waugh details his family tree, including the many writers in the family. In this work, he ruminates on his family legacy, how he will stand up in the face of it, and details the complex characters that are the Waughs.

The Waugh family's introduction to the writing world occurred in May 1888 when Arthur Waugh (father to Evelyn) had his poem "Gordon in Africa" published. This event "marked the birth of a remarkable literary dynasty. Works by Waugh have been in continuous print ever since: nine of Arthur's descendants have produced 180 books between them. Novels, plays, poems, essays, histories, travelogues, philosophies and biographies have gushed from our pens in cataracts every since" (41).

The father and son relationships throughout the family true are mostly peculiar. They range from Arthur Waugh's fanatical devotion to his eldest son Alec, to Evelyn's cold and lackadaisical parenting style. Arthur hero worshipped his son Alec and likened their relationship as a Christ-like union, "bound together by the nails that pierce through them both" (72). Interesting then, that both of Arthur's sons could scarcely be bothered by their own children. In fact, Evelyn's daughter Teresa reports that her first memory of her frequently absent father was "of a red-faced, uniformed man appearing from a window at Pixton, shouting across the garden: 'For God's sake, someone take those children to the other lawn.'" (277).

Just like his forebears, Alexander Waugh is unsentimental and frank on all subjects. I think its probably fairly rare for an individual to be willing to portray their family in such decisive terms, boldly laying bare all flaws. The author's dry sense of humor is laced throughout the book, with no subject spared, including his great-grandfather's inability to quit masturbating despite his father's admonishment to "think of cricket or the day's game" (64) (with a footnote from the author pointing out that cricket is, in fact, a field game played with bats and balls) to Evelyn's death in the bathroom, leading to a small pile of feces on the floor, (which the author argues was Evelyn's final joke).

This is a witty inside look at a family full of witty and infamous individuals. It is a story of writers by a skilled writer, who rather than allow his family connection to the subject cloud his perception of the story, allows it to merely give more personal insight. Alexander Waugh is the fourth generation of Waughs to write for a living and as he says, "I suppose, when I think of it, that all of us Waughs only became writers to impress our fathers" (450).

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A frequently amusing, sometimes sad and horrifying but always clear-eyed look at the dynamics of a line of authors that it would be easy to write off as a bunch of upper-class twits, written by the grandson of Evelyn Waugh. Author Alexander Waugh seems to have inherited many of the libertarian/conservative tendencies of his father, Auberon Waugh, and the book is full of little asides that would likely appeal to those of similar political persuasion.

[Christopher Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of any of the Waughs, this is a must-read. Compared to the two Evelyn Waugh biographies I've read (Stannard and Sykes), there is a lot more detail here about Evelyn's relationship with his father Arthur, and in particular it brings out the horrific favoritism that Arthur Waugh bestowed on his son Alec at Evelyn's expense. This is sort of the key to the whole conundrum of the Waugh men and their different--and differently pathological--personalities and, of course, their writing. In particular, the author (Alexander Waugh is the oldest son of Evelyn's oldest son Auberon) outlines all of the different characters in Evelyn's fiction that were based on his father Arthur and catalogues for us in detail all the ways in which Evelyn used his fiction to attack and humiliate and wound his father. The distant, uncaring, cruel-with-a-smile Ned Ryder (Charles's father) in Brideshead Revisited was only the tip of the iceberg. (Ned is interesting because he has Arthur's parenting style (at least vis à vis Evelyn) but Evelyn's cruel wit; Arthur himself had nowhere near that dry a sense of humor.)

Relatedly, one can trace Alec's personality quirks--if one can call a rampant, flamboyant, unapologetic, and omnivorous lifelong sex addiction a personality quirk--to this favoritism. He was in a sense proving to the world that he was NOT the stuffy Victorian Arthur Waugh's "golden boy" but in fact a rogue. It is amazing how forgiving Arthur is of Alec's sexual character. Alec actually comes off quite sympathetic. He treated Evelyn with utter, even heroic, love and graciousness given the context of being the benificiary--and Evelyn the victim--of Arthur's favoritism. But I think I came away with such a good impression of Alec because Alexander decides to soft-pedal the effects that Alec's Casanova-like adventurist satyriasis had on his poor wife and kids, whom he utterly abandoned. One of the interesting themes here is how bisexual men in the same family who take on the identity of heterosexual "dabblers" in buggery--which was the cultural norm in Evelyn and Alec's generation--negotiate their identity vis à vis each other and vis à vis their own fathers and sons. The enormous scandal of the publication of The Loom of Youth, Alec's exposé of public-school buggery, is at the center of how this played out in the Waugh family.

As for Alexander's father Auberon, I must say that I have a personal dislike of Auberon: he is horrifically overrated as a writer, in my opinion, and he had all of his father Evelyn's bad qualities and none of his good ones: he was, in his writing and in his life, cruel and vituperative but without Evelyn's compensating humanity and literary genius. Evelyn was an emotional cripple; he WANTED to be a warm and loving person, but he didn't know how; he even said as much in unguarded moments. His religiosity was the only way he could express his humanity. His carapace of unpleasantness was paper-thin; one pities him, and loves him. Auberon did NOT want to be a warm and loving person. Also, Evelyn fervently wished that he had been born an aristocrat and made it his life to hobnob with aristocracy and emulate them (the Churchills, Mitfords, Spencers, et al. were personal friends), though he was consumed with feelings of inadequacy with respect to them. The important point, though, is that nobility as a way of life and as an ethos was something he lived up to. For all his crabbiness, he was a gentleman and treated people with grace and respect the way actual gentlemen do, or are supposed to. Auberon, on the other hand, was a snob in the way that Evelyn never was: he believed he was better than people below him on the social ladder and treated them that way, which is contrary to the actual ethos of nobility. In fact, he made his contempt for the lower orders a kind of trademark of his; it was never implicit, it was explicit--and it was unearned. He became a kind of shock jock; but the irony is that in so doing he made it obvious to the world that he was not noble, because nobility demands one treat everyone with respect. He presented himself as an aristocrat (he married a toff, and more of a toff than his father had married, too) but was, at the end of the day, a rank vulgarian. As a writer, Auberon, unlike Evelyn, truly had nothing to say, even though he said it endlessly, with a gigantic, brobdingnagian, daily output of non-fiction screeds. Alexander also cuts Auberon way too much slack on the political front; he claims his father was apolitical; bullshit: he was an élitist Thatcherite, and I can smell them a mile away.

I wish there were more in this book on the younger sons of Evelyn--James and Septimus--and of Auberon--especially Nat. The brief discussions of Nat, with whom Alexander has collaborated as a writer--are tantalizing: he is a madman comedian, of the anarchic Robin Williams variety, and also a peripatetic world traveler like his own great-great-uncle Alec, but whether that extends to becoming an aficionado of the brothels and glory holes of the seven continents, as it did for Alec, is something which probably cannot be fully discussed regarding someone still alive.

The ways in which the same genetic and cultural ingredients are differently mixed to create such different, and all to some extent brilliant, creative men is the true wonder of this book. Alexander has done a fine job.

Also: the correspondence between a teenaged Alec and his father on the subject of masturbation and homosexuality is a jaw-dropping insight into the sexual mentality of arrested Victorianism in Edwardian England. Should be required reading in "history of sexuality" courses.

[Ted Dawe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book if you are interested in the broader Waugh clan. I hadn't heard of Alexander until I read his obituary. He certainly gives a board view of the Waugh writers and a century-long context to view them in. Beyond this, anyone interested in examining their own relationship with their father (particularly males) will get some interesting insights into the complex issues which we are all party to. I read this slowly while travelling. I regret not having tracked down the paper copy (I read mine on Kindle) I would have liked to have seen the photographs.

[Alexander Pechacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

The entire Waugh family was very tight knit. Each generation venerably handed down family ties. Such a wonderful read between fathers and sons with respect to each other. I really believe we must keep these kind of relationships between men to succeed in the future. Rest in peace, Alexander Waugh (1963-2024) who was not admitted to Oxford but still held peace through the ages and ended up becoming a writer himself like his father and his father before him.

[Cass · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute hoot, if you’re interested in the lives of writers and enjoy British eccentricity. It’s not a formal book, to put it politely. You won’t find a list of published works, for example. However as a chatty, almost gossipy family history it’s gloriously readable, funny, grim, whimsical, intimate and lively.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of the biographer's art. And quite often very funny.

[P · Rating 2 out of 5]

eh. kinda boring

[Jane Smyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading both Evelyn’s and Bron’s letters. Fascinating and hilarious.

[Olga Vannucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cleverest of men
Are not the best of fathers,
Or, maybe in the end,
Their strangeness makes a difference.

[Goran Remborg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intressant läsning om flera generationer av fäder och söner, i en tid, era som inte finns längre, boarding schools, etc. .

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

In “Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family,” novelist and critic Alexander Waugh (grandson of Evelyn Waugh, son of Auberon Waugh) has created a vastly entertaining exploration of his literary family – a history of its famous fathers and sons – that can serve only to fan the flames of “Waviana” in any reader acquainted with the author of Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, Brideshead Revisited, and numerous other wonderful comic novels. The “Wavian” literary legacy is deadly satiric wit, whether in fiction, journalism, or criticism. The book abounds with delicious morsels.

Readers familiar with Evelyn Waugh’s work will delight in the book. The cast of characters could have been plucked from his novels (and sheds light on how much of his own life he used for material). The author’s great-great grandfather Alexander Waugh (known by his descendants as “The Brute”) was a Victorian country doctor who delighted in blood sports, amateur theatricals and heartless sadism where his family were concerned; his claim to fame was the invention of a particularly nasty obstetric implement, “Waugh’s Long Fine Dissecting Forceps.” His son Arthur Waugh became a well-known literary figure as a critic, poet and publisher, whose sentimental love of Dickens was surpassed only by his obsessive, smothering love for his firstborn, Alec, and his cold disregard for his second son, Evelyn.

One unexpected value of the book is its usefulness as a manual of child-rearing. Moral of the story: a) Smother your child with love, honour, and attention and he will grow up to be Alec Waugh, a minor novelist, serial fornicator, alcoholic and wastrel. B) Deny your child any hint of true affection or regard and he will grow up to be Evelyn Waugh, renowned novelist and one of the funniest writers of English. In raising his own children, Evelyn Waugh followed option b) to great effect. Here is Evelyn Waugh in a typical reference about his children:

"I have my two eldest children here, a boy and girl, two girls languish at Pixton; a fifth leaps in the womb. I abhor their company because I can only regard children as defective adults. I hate their physical ineptitude, find their jokes flat and monotonous. Both are considered great wits by their contemporaries. The elder girl has a taste for theology which promises well for a career as an Abbess; the boy is mindless and obsessed with social success.”]

Or this:

“My news are the great news that all my children have at last disappeared to their various places of education. My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. I now dislike them all equally. Of children as of procreation – the pleasure is momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.”

As one who can never quite get the point of children, I applaud these sentiments enthusiastically. Waugh’s Curmudgeon Method of Child Rearing proved a great success. His “mindless” son Auberon Waugh turned out to be one of England’s most viciously funny and widely loved (and hated) journalists. Auberon’s son Alexander, critic and novelist (who, for the first eight years of his life, was referred to only as “Fat Fool” by his father), has obviously inherited the family gift. “Fathers and Sons” is probably the most amusing exercise in autobiography I’ve ever read.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suppose, when I think of it, that all of us Waughs only became writers to impress our fathers.
-- from "Fathers and Sons"
Alexander Waugh's "Fathers and Sons" covers five generations of fathers and sons in the literary Waugh family. The direct line starts with Alexander Waugh, nicknamed "The Brute"; continues to Arthur, then to Evelyn, then to Auberon and finally to the author.
Various other male and female Waughs are encountered along the way.
All of the men, with the possible exception of the author, were, it seems to me, bad fathers. Like Christopher Buckley's more enjoyable portrayal of his family life in "Losing Mum and Pup," this book made me all the more grateful for my own parents.
Evelyn is the most famous of the Waughs and the pivot-point of this book. We learn much about him in "Fathers and Sons." His first wife was named -- wait for it -- Evelyn. For clarity, the author refers to her as She-Evelyn. He-Evelyn's proposal to his second wife, Laura, was in writing and admirable in its honesty:
I can't advise you in my favour because I think it would be beastly for you, but think how nice it would be for me.
Evelyn and Laura had seven children, six of whom survived past childhood, even though Laura liked cows better than people and Evelyn was bored by his children.
In 1946, Evelyn wrote about his children to a friend:
I abhor their company because I can only regard children as defective adults. I hate their physical ineptitude, find their jokes flat and monotonous.
I found "Fathers and Sons" to be not edifying and occasionally vulgar, and at times I considered not finishing it. There are quite a few interesting tidbits, however, and bits of droll humor as well.
There is, for example, this brief conversation between the author and his dying father:
A few years later, as he lay in a bewildered state only weeks from death, he asked: "Remind me, why do I hate Max Hastings?"
"Because he sacked me, Papa?"
"Oh, yes, of course. What a twerp!"

[Tanja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely adore this book.
It is well written, with great wit and with so much warmth. Alexander Waugh is clearly not blind to the faults of his forbearers, and some of their actions are horrid and despicable, but he does not shy away from them, does not cover up, tries to hide or to excuse. And yet, the entire book reads as a love letter to a family that has crafted a succession of great writers. Several times I found myself laughing out loud, or simply smiling happily.
I loved reading about the eccentricities, faults and strengths of the Waugh family throughout the decades, if nothing else to congratulate myself afterwards that maybe my family is not as disfunctional as I might have thought.
I have always enjoyed Evelyn Waugh's absurdist stories, and I even remember reading a few examples of Auberon Waugh's sharp wit over the years (and after reading this book I feel compelled to read quite a bit more of theirs).
The Waugh family tradition of great writers, with sharp wit, a keen eye for life's absurdities and self-depreciating humour is clearly alive.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally finished this book, that took a while for me to get into, but then I could hardly put the second half down. Probably because the second half dealt mainly with adult Evelyn Waugh and his son, and let's face it - Evelyn was the most interesting Waugh. It's astonishing how literary this family was and even more astonishing how horrible at parenting there were! But they did lead interesting lives and Evelyn's letters were just as witty as his books, which make this is an entertaining read. I think the author (Evelyn's grandson) did a fine job of turning a critical and objective eye on his family, even his own father (who was an actual good Waugh father, for a change), which could not have been easy to do. In the end, you're happy that you didn't have to go to a cruel English boarding school, be the lesser loved son, not have you father visit you in the ICU, etc., but can't help thinking that you'd have a lot to write about too if you did!

[Idiosyncratic · Rating 4 out of 5]

My two favourite bits:

- When Evelyn was in school, he "took a violent dislike" to his science master. Writing to his father, Evelyn says "My chief activity at the moment is a guerilla warfare with Treble, the science master. We simply hate each other and spend the whole time trying to score off each other...My latest piece of hubris is to write my science essay in blank verse. I don't think he will spot it as I have written it as prose and he is most illiterate."

- And when Evelyn was being interviewed by the BBC (who were badgering him a good deal with strange questions like "Have you ever wanted to kill somebody?"): "When pressed as to whether he would be prepared to execute a man, he answered 'Do you mean actually do the hanging?'

'Yes.'

'I should think it very odd for them to choose a novelist for such a task.' "

[Chuck Lowry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite novels, and since I like the other work of Evelyn Waugh as well, I thought I would pick up this "family autobiography" by Evelyn Waugh's grandson. It covers five generations in some detail, two before Evelyn and two after, and it is quite interesting. Among the things I like is the author's willingness to use his family knowledge to make intelligent speculation, but to let you know when he is doing that, e.g., "I strongly suspect that The Brute forced his unwanted attentions onto one or more of his daughters, thereby explaining their sexual reticence later in life, but I am unable to find a shred of evidence for this." I'm not sure how much deep meaning there is here, but it is a very good story.

[Scuzzymonster · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not so much boring as obnoxious. It claims to be an analysis of the father-son dynamic, but is really just a self indulgent piece of ancestor worship on the part of Alexander Waugh. Not that he tries to claim that his family were flawless, in fact he seems to relish describing the many unpleasant aspects of his male relatives' characters, but he gives the impression that all these sins should be forgiven because of their literary genius. Some parts are genuinely interesting, especially the sections on Evelyn and Auberon, but wading through the self congratulating tone of the book is not really worth it.

[The American Conservative]

'Four generations of Waugh boys—from Evelyn’s father Arthur, born 1866, to Alexander, born 1963—have grown up to be writers. Between them, Arthur’s descendents—daughters, too—have produced 180 books of all kinds: biographies, novels, journalism, poetry, even treatises entitled Time and God. The last two are among Alexander’s previous works: warm-ups for tackling the Waughs, one might say.'

Read the full review, "The Waugh at Home," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly excellent: it's hard to imagine how the literary gene can be so consistently passed down in this manner, but it obviously has been. Despite Brideshead Revisited being a cherished favorite of mine, I'd never read any Waugh biography before this. Alexander Waugh writes with a breezy humor that shows his relationship to his father and grandfather, yet has a sense of objectivity that allows the book to be something more than a navel-gazing exercise about growing up in a famous family.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Evelyn Waugh, and of memoirs, so I really enjoyed this. Alexander Waugh (Evelyn's grandson) writes about the dysfunctional relationships between his family's fathers and sons, beginning with his great grandfather, who was nicknamed "The Brute." Waugh (Alexander) sneaks in a snarky comment when the book starts getting too serious or depressing. Most of these are very funny, and worthy of his grandfather. Sometimes, though, they're more smarmy than snarky. Smarky.

[Lisa the Tech · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first fell for Alexander Waugh's 'God'. His book 'Time' was very good as well. Some authors, I find, get better with every book, while others lose interest and live on their laurels. Others maintain the status quo. With 'Fathers and sons', Alexander Waugh definitely falls into the first category. If not for this book, I would have never looked into his father's works or his grandfather's works. That says something about Alex Waugh's awesomeness.
Definitely a book to return to again and again.

[Mauberley]

This is a fine memoir, neither self-serving nor an attampt to keep the family skeletons hidden. For me, the most remarkable section was that which dealt with the author's great-grandfather (Arthur) and his grandfather (Evelyn) and grand-uncle (Alec). All lived strange lives that were not always happy. Forever grateful for learning the correct pronunciation of the name of the author's father (Auberon), one of my favourite journalists from the last century.

[Winterwade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alongside insights into the great Evelyn, Alexander Waugh shares with the reader that most potentially divisive of subjects: his family history. If, like me, you find this kind of thing fascinating (in this case, not least because of the prominence of Evelyn, Auberon and Alec Waugh), you will love this sometimes-acerbic, but essentially good-hearted journey through the centuries with the Waugh family.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads to me like a giant apologia for the horrors that were the Waughs, especially Evelyn, and consequently has a kind of star-fuck aura, even if it is granpa who is the star. Lots of excuse making here, and what a wacked out family. It sent me back to Brideshead, which I am enjoying much more than this book. TMI on this one.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably would have enjoyed this more if I'd ever read anything by Evelyn Waugh, but as it was, I still found it an amusing look at father and son relations. The Waughs are all eccentric men and all in their own particular ways, so that made this interesting to read. They're all very British with very dry senses of humor.

[Ineke Kluft · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a good read, I can not help but give it the full 5 stars. It is well written, very funny and witty, not being Britisch (Dutch) I kept thinking how very British this family is. In fact it is not funny that a father (Evelyn) doen't like his children but I had to laugh about it. And the mother liked her cows better than her children....
I enjoyed it very much.