Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

by Paula Byrne

A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, ‘Brideshead Revisited’. Evelyn Waugh was already famous when ‘Brideshead Revisited’ was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no ‘immediate propaganda value’. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith – an elegy, in many ways, for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier. The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts in ‘Brideshead Revisited’. In this engrossing biography, Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through those friendships that mattered most to him. Far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, she uncovers a man as loving and complex as the family that inspired him – a family deeply traumatised when their father was revealed as a homosexual and forced to flee the country. This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Books About Books, Biography Memoir, Literary Criticism, British Literature

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Paula Byrne is a British author and biographer. She is married to writer Jonathan Bate, the Shakespeare scholar.

Reviews

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fresh and invigorating biography exploring Waugh’s Oxford experience and the pivotal relationships that led to the writing of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ - not least, his conversion to Catholicism; his youthful love affairs with Hugh Lygon, Alastair Graham and Richard Pares and the subsequent lifelong friendship with Lygon’s sisters and their Malvern home Madresfield (‘Mad’) Court.

All the big moments are here, interspersed with perceptive commentaries on Waugh’s contemporaries and their place in his fiction. Byrne displays her exhaustive research skills lightly and creates a page-turner of a literary biography that is both erudite and compelling.

When you’ve finished the original, this is the next place to explore.

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paula Byrne set out to write this book because she believed that Evelyn Waugh had been consistently misrepresented as a snob and a curmudgeonly misanthropist. I'm very glad that she did. She eschews the cradle to grave approach and instead focuses on key moments in Evelyn Waugh's life and in particular those that informed his work.

Before reading Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, I'd just read and enjoyed Brideshead Revisited. Brideshead Revisited is essential, an absorbing and sumptuous eulogy for the end of the golden age of the British aristocracy.

Reading both books fairly closely together works well. I gained a lot from having Brideshead fresh in my mind. I also gained interesting insights into other Evelyn Waugh books I'd read (Decline and Fall, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and Black Mischief). Since finishing this book in 2013 I went on to read all Evelyn Waugh's novels and some of his non fiction.

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's magnum opus, and I was amazed at the extent to which it was based on Evelyn Waugh's own experiences and those of people he knew. When one of Evelyn Waugh's friends asked him how he got away with using real life models for fictional characters, his reply was no offence will be taken provided you say that he or she is attractive. There must have been plenty of people portrayed in Evelyn Waugh's fiction, particularly those he disliked, who would surely have taken offence. Another remarkable thing about Evelyn Waugh's biographical approach to fiction is how, frequently, the truth was stranger or more outrageous than the fiction it inspired. A notable example is the Lord Marchmain character in Brideshead Revisited, for whom Evelyn Waugh drew heavily on Lord Beauchamp (of the Lygon family who inspired many of the characters in Brideshead Revisited), with one significant difference. In deference to the Lygon family, he removed almost all traces of Lord Beauchamp's homosexuality. It was this homosexuality that was at the centre of a scandal that caused his downfall, and exile from England. The real story is far more surprising and tragic than the backstory hinted at in Brideshead Revisited.

The best biographies bring their subjects alive, and so inspire their readers to investigate further. This biography succeeds in bringing Evelyn Waugh, and his world, vividly to life. After reading Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, I feel I understand him better and was inspired to read those books I have not read, and to re-read those that I already know. If you have any interest in either Evelyn Waugh, or the era and social milieus he depicts in his books, then you'll devour this biography.

4/5

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Brideshead Revisited" is one of my favourite novels, so I was interested to read this book; which is partly a biography of Evelyn Waugh's life and partly a portrait of the Lygon family, used as a model for the characters in the novel. This is a fascinating portrait of an era, with Waugh himself very much the Charles Ryder outsider, from a minor public school and seemingly doomed to spend his time at Oxford with those dull associates from his restricted circle. However, as we know, he is enticed by the glamorous, aristocratic set, seemingly exclusive (almost all Old Etonians) and, once infiltrated by Waugh, fodder for his sharp wit and imagination. Throughout his life, Waugh seemed attracted to eccentric characters and Oxford certainly opened his eyes to a lifestyle he had not previously encountered. This work does highlight that excess and debauchery are a dangerous lifestyle though, as many of the characters we meet as 'Bright Young Things' are unable to withstand the pace and alcohol, especially, becomes hard to control.

This fascinating book explains how Waugh met Hugh Lygon at Oxford, second son of the Earl of Beauchamp, and was later introduced to the rest of the family at their ancestral home, Madresfield ('Mad'). His friendship with the family continued throughout his life, but the author deftly explains 'who is who' in the Brideshead world and uncovers Waugh's tendency to fall in love with families that he met, perhaps underscoring the difficulty he felt in the relationship with his own father. This is as much about the author as the novel and as much about a period of time as the characters. If you like Waugh's novels, his wit and his genius, then you will love this book. Beware though, that this will make you want to read (or re-read) “Brideshead Revisited,” and also note that the kindle edition does not include illustrations.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This is immensely readable, especially the first third, but Paula Byrne is a writer who tends to oversimplify the relationships between life and fiction (I found the same flaw in her book on Jane Austen), and to overstate her case: here she claims, in her prologue, to 'find the hidden key' to Brideshead - when all she means is that she's going to make connections between characters, not just in Brideshead but in all of Waugh's fiction, and people he knew in real life. Hardly revolutionary. And, by making such linear, direct correlations, she plays down the shaping influence of Waugh's imagination, that alchemy that makes him a novelist and not merely a journalist/diarist/memoirist/autobiographer.

With that niggle out of the way, this works as a biography of Waugh about whom I knew little (not least the fact of his middle-class family home in Golders Green, of all places!). The early sections on Waugh's education at a minor public school then Oxford almost seem to reverse the life-fiction equation: I was often brought to questions whether Byrne wasn't so much reading Waugh's fiction through his life as re-constructing his life via his fiction. There are places, for example, where she imagines Waugh's life as a version of Charles Ryder's, down to descriptions of tea-tables lifted from the novel (honey-buns and anchovy toast).

I don't think there's any doubt that Waugh drew on aspects of his life and the people he knew for his fiction, but his characters seem to be more composites than straight one-for-one duplicates. It's interesting to learn more about the Lygon family, for sure, but this book itself slightly undermines its own premise by commenting on other aristocratic families with whom Waugh seemed to have fallen in love (e.g. the Plunkett-Greens).

Overall, then, this is less innovative as a biography than it claims - there are no 'secrets of Brideshead' to be revealed. Very readable, all the same: 3.5 stars.

[Whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is perhaps less a review of this book than a reflection on Brideshead Revisited.

Brideshead Revisited is one of those odd books: I don't think it can really be read now. Or at least, read and understood the way Waugh meant it to be understood. You need a religious sensibility that has long since been lost to the world: a belief that God wants you to deny yourself pleasure; that in denying yourself earthly pleasures, you accrue merit in Heaven. And that that love for God is better and more important that any corrupt (in the old sense of the word), ephemeral joy you might get in this material world.

I can just hear the chorus now: No, no! You got it all wrong! It's all about how religion/Catholicism is awful and destroys people's lives. So speaks the secular 21st century mind. Actually, so speaks the religious 21st century mind--Waugh would have spat on the Prosperity Gospel. If you're reading this, you've read the book. So consider then, this passage where Lord Marchmain accepts God at the end:

Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. “O God,” I prayed, “don’t let him do that.” But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came to me back from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

Consider the scene where Charles gives up Julia, understanding why she has to leave him:

“I don’t want to make it easier for you,” I said; “I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.”

Consider also his conversion, his prayer in the chapel:

The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright, as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient newly learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp...
...
Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame--a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our ante-room.

“You’re looking unusually cheerful to-day,” said the second in-command.

And if the text of the book itself doesn't convince you, read this book. Or maybe don't: you might want to cling on to your own reading of Brideshead Revisited instead.

What Others Thought

The Guardian:

Since its publication in 1945, a vast amount has been written about the novel and about the striking similarities between two families, the fictional Flytes and the real-life Lygons. The parallels seem almost infinite--between Lord Beauchamp and Lord Marchmain, Hugh Lygon and Sebastian, and the two great houses, magnificent Brideshead and Madresfield, the Lygons' moated manor house in Worcestershire

Paula Byrne is the latest to explore the people and the story that inspired the book and she does so with acuity and panache. Her stated aim is to portray Waugh through his friendship with the Lygons, and in the process reveal some substantial new information about the high-society scandal that in 1931 electrified the country.
...
Byrne understands very well the powerful enchantment that Madresfield, or "Mad" as the girls called it, cast over Waugh. The beauty of the place, the limit-less freedom, the traditions of centuries juxtaposed with childish high spirits and silliness, all proved irresistible to the penniless young man from Golders Green. Byrne entertainingly summarises his career up to this point--the childhood, the schooldays, the melancholia and debauchery of Oxford, the schoolmastering and the first published works--and layers in with this the story of the Lygons, of Lord Beauchamp's early life, and of those of his wife and children.
...
Essentially, what Mad World provides is a lively introduction to Waugh and to Brideshead, and to the rarefied social world in which much of the novel is set. To this is added a small amount of new material, to which, understandably, much emphasis is given.
...
Much as I admire Mad World, I do have some reservations: source notes, disgracefully, are almost non-existent and the index is virtually useless.
...

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a biography of Evelyn Waugh, mainly a literary biography, looking at what was behind what he wrote, and especially Brideshead Revisited. This is an informative biography with some serious faults.
Waugh was middle class, but spent a good deal of his literary time writing about the aristocracy and the upper classes. He was at Oxford at the time of the “Bright Young Things” and the reaction to the Great War. Waugh was also bisexual and had a number of male lovers whilst at Oxford. He tended to have intense friendships with the women in his life. The Mad in the title refers to Madresfield Court a country house near Malvern in Worcestershire. It was the model for Brideshead. It was the home of the Lygon family. Hugh Lygon was at Oxford with Waugh and was the primary model for Sebastian Flyte. Waugh became a regular visitor at Madresfield and he got to know the three Lygon sisters very well. He maintained correspondence and lifelong friendships with them all. The plot of Brideshead is all here: the disgrace of the Lygon’s father, Earl Beauchamp; in the novel for a mistress, in real life because of predilection for young men, whom he used to hire as footmen, butlers and chauffeurs, purely for their looks and willingness to be sexual partners. He was forced to live abroad in the 1930s: it’s all in the novel.
Byrne charts Waugh’s literary journey quite effectively. Waugh was partially a satirist and could be very acerbic. There is no doubt that Waugh does manage to capture the end of an era and the end of the great country houses with dozens of staff. Waugh was converted to Catholicism in the 1930s and that is a theme in the latter part of the novel.
It’s a tour through the upper echelons of society in the 1920s and 30s, but there are issues. Byrne clearly documents that there are many instances of the men involved having sexual partners who were very young; early and mid-teens, very young men, indeed children. If there is a villain in this for Byrne, it is Lady Beauchamp. She was very religious and ended up separated from her husband, most of the children staying with him at the house. This seems rather unfair of Byrne as she manages to stay entirely non-judgemental about the use of underage sexual partners. There are also inaccuracies. Noel Coward would have been surprised to find himself described as a Catholic 9he wasn’t) and the index and source notes are pretty much useless.
If you are not enamoured of the British upper classes, then there is a good chance you will find this tedious. Reading this you may also begin to think that Waugh was something of a parasite who partially lived through others. I don’t think there is a great deal of new information here. It is a good analysis of Brideshead Revisited though.

[Jenny Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

A tedious, excruciatingly detailed portrayal of the lives of a group of people about whom I really wish, now, I knew less.

If you had have respect left for the British ruling class, this book will rid you of it. Wealthy, selfish drunkards whose path in life was smoothed for them thanks to the connections they made in the public schools and University where a culture of sexual predation flourished, they dabbled in a kind of homosexuality that did not blink at sexually abusing boy prostitutes, and, though they shuddered with horror at the idea of consorting with the middle class, did not drive from their ranks a man who ran over its members when driving very drunk, twice, getting off easy because of his political connections.

So one of them wrote some good books, for which we are supposed to overlook the toxic culture he exemplified and wallowed in. The only additional understanding I came away with from reading this book is the thought that Waugh must have become such an enthusiastic Catholic and then Catholic apologist, because no other Church is as tolerant and forgiving of pederasts.

Throughout the book I got the feeling that the author thinks we should excuse the behavior of wealthy older men who sexually prey on children, servants, and the poor because homosexuality was illegal at the time. But the portrait she paints of the homosexuality of the period is filled with the kinds of cliches that are what has stood in the way of gay people having rights until now. The author apparently doesn't get that an anecdote about a schoolmaster who "enjoys" himself with a young boy at a school picnic is not funny, and that sexual orientation and sexual predation are two different things.

Most disturbing, too, is the way the author thinks we should feel sorry for Lord Beauchamp because his wife finally had enough of his constant rogering of handsome footmen he'd hired on for just that purpose, which he did, obsessively, in the home where she had borne him 7 children. Apparently the fact that she wasn't as cheerful a person as her husband makes her the villain in this story. I came away wondering why she hadn't poisoned him after producing the heir and a spare.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I freely admit to an aversion to most biographies; those half ton tomes stuffed to overflowing with regurgitated facts that so often represent the flotsam and jetsam of the life in question as opposed to actual milestones and achievements. Happily, this is not the case with Paula Byrne’s Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, a biography as witty and amusing as its subject.

Mad World follows Waugh’s life from cradle to grave. As we trek along we are treated to brief portraits of Waugh’s parents and brother Alec, all those Mitford sisters, his annulled first marriage and life-long second, his conversion to Catholicism, as well as pointedly detailed descriptions of his published works, including Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited.

The pace quickens (and never flags) once Waugh enters Oxford, where he quickly develops friendships with the likes of Harold Acton and Brian Howard, and embarks upon a series of homosexual relationships, the most profound and lasting with Hugh Lygon, second son of the 7th Earl Beauchamp, and the inspiration for Sebastian Flyte.

Waugh is taken under Lygon’s wing, and is introduced to the family, becoming a life-long friend and confidante of sisters Mary and Dorothy, as well as a fixture at the family manse Madresfield (hence “Mad World”). He witnessed, and remained steadfast throughout the family’s dishonor and the disgrace of the Earl, who fled the country rather than face charges of Gross Indecency.

Byrne has painstakingly researched her material, and though her finished text is rich in detail and critical observances, it seems never heavy handed or in the least tedious. Indeed, her work reads as though it were a novel, a brilliant modern day retelling of Waugh’s classic Brideshead, which is the kindest compliment it could be paid.

[Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Special Content only on my blog, Strange and Random Happenstance, during Jazzy July to celebrate the release of Lauren Willig's The Other Daughter, including introductions by Lauren! (July 2015)

Evelyn Waugh was one of the writers who immortalized the 20s generation of "Bright Young People" through his books. But his book, Brideshead Revisited, more then any of his other work, was a touchstone for a generation and one of the greatest books of the 20th century. Yet the story didn't emerge fully formed from his conscious, it was inspired by his relationship with the Lygon family. They lived in a great old pile, Madresfield, where the three sons and four daughters grew up in bucolic bliss till their family was rocked by scandal. The Lygon patriarch, Lord Beauchamp, was exiled from England upon divorce proceedings initiated by his wife for his homosexual tendencies. The children blamed their mother for this rend in the family and started to live a life devoid of parental control. Into this world Evelyn Waugh appeared. Bringing his signature wit and style he befriended the family and came to fall in love with them all, rumors had it that back at Oxford he was more then a little in love with the second son, Hugh. Hugh would become the basis for Sebastian Flyte, and the entire Lygon family and their life was to be immortalized in Waugh's magnum opus. But did they have any say in the matter?

If you want to keep your well held belief that Evelyn Waugh is a genius and Brideshead Revisited is one of the most original masterpieces of the last century, I urge you not to read this book. If, on the other hand, you always suspected that Waugh wasn't that nice or that Brideshead Revisited was a boring plotless book, well, you probably won't read Mad World, but know that your opinion is validated a thousand fold. While I always suspected that Evelyn Waugh wasn't that nice, never did I think that he would so carelessly use his friends and family as fodder for his books. Yes, I did know that he satirized those around him, much as Nancy Mitford did, but this book brought it home as something more. Waugh was a user. He lived an itinerant life travelling from one friend's home to another and then using what he saw there to create his books. He lambasted friends who couldn't use the world around them as fodder for their books and needed to do research, yet he used the lives him around in a cruel and flippant ways in his work. He was a leech, and not a very likable one. The thing that mystifies me is that Byrne claims that Waugh's friends didn't blame him for capitalizing on their pain, that mockery was part and parcel or being Waugh's friend and that he was easy to forgive. Yet Byrne says this, she doesn't show this. How am I to believe this? Because it sounds like Waugh hurt a lot of people to get to where he got in the literary world and that the wounds struck his friends deep but they just put on a brave face for him.

Mad World boils down all Waugh's books, his entire literary cannon, to thinly disguised roman à clefs. Byrne, while obviously a fan of Waugh, did a disservice to him in writing this book because it takes away the magic of that lost generation captured in Brideshead Revisited. Why is the magic gone? Because Waugh just used the Lygon family and transferred their lives into another medium. While the book still captures this lost generation of halcyon Oxford days, it narrows down the universality of the book. It makes it one family's history, not an archetypal history. It also shows that Waugh, while able to spin a wonderful phrase, didn't have an original bone in his body. He was more historian than writer. All his books, not just Brideshead Revisited, are rooted in reality, almost painfully so. Each character has a real life counterpart, each adventure is centered on a story in his life. While writers do take inspiration from the world around them, it feels like Waugh was a hack. He could ONLY write the world around him transmuted into a book. And while Brideshead Revisited was a loving portrayal of the Lygons, unlike some of his vicious parodies hidden in such characters as Anthony Blanche, did Waugh's friendship with them give him carte blanche to write this story? No it didn't. He used them and moved on.

But what disturbed me most about this book was that while the book was cleverly supposed to be a dual history of Waugh and the Lygons, which is why I was interested in this book, it became more and more a single-sided story where we were just given Waugh's POV. We read his copious letters to the Lygon sisters, and how they were transmuted into the Flytes, down to even phrases excised from Waugh's letters to them and then used in the book, but we never hear their voices. We never get a feeling as to who these sisters were. Was their relationship reciprocal? Did they actually write to Evelyn as much as he wrote to them? Why don't we have any of their letters? Was Waugh perhaps a venal man who carried on single-sided correspondence with the great and the good making more out of a friendship then it really was? I'd say this is quite possible and without any evidence or letters to the contrary, this is the only conclusion I can reach. The Lygon sisters where barely more than props to Evelyn who used his connection to them to puff up his ego and used his experiences with them to make a name for himself with his writing. And while Byrne states that after the sisters left Madresfield forever Waugh kept up a correspondence with them that lasted the rest of his life, but that isn't what it looks like. It looks like he wrote Brideshead Revisited, made a true masterpiece and dropped them. He'd occasionally look in but he had no use for them and his old itinerant lifestyle so, much like the props they appear to be, they were placed in storage only to be occasionally let out into the light.

The subject matter and how it's handled wasn't the biggest downfall of the book. The biggest downfall was the haphazard way that Byrne decided to keep some facts and omit others. By redacting parts of Evelyn's life, how can I actually believe anything this authors says in her stilted and amateurish writing style? She skips over things that I think are rather important, like Evelyn working as a gossip columnist. Not only did this feed into his writing style but it was a common experience with his friends and contemporaries. Why omit this? Because if it was to show him as a superior writer, well, everything about this book portrays him as a hack, so why not a hack journalist? Then Byrne's lack of adherence to naming conventions drove me batty. In a time when everyone had three nicknames, just choose one please? I seriously don't know which is which Lygon sister due to Byrne randomly choosing a different nickname or occasionally their real name. Just stop. But worst of all was the repetitive nature of the book, the reliance on only a handful of quotes used over and over again. Did Byrne have any editor at all? My guess is no as in the way she's string quotes from different sources with clunky "and this" "and then" "and now." This kind of sloppy writing was beaten out of me in high school and here is a published author trying to write a discourse on Brideshead Revisited that wouldn't pass muster with the most generous of teachers.

As for the most disgusting aspect of this book? The general acceptance of pederast culture. Wherein any pretty young man was viewed as fair game, even if they were underage. Teacher's quite literally using their students, in particular a nasty story about one of Evelyn's friends having a student sodomize him with his foot, and Lord Beauchamp using every able bodied and attractive male as a possible sexual conquest. I'm not saying this shouldn't be addressed or omitted. This happened and a discourse needs to be had. What I am saying is that it shouldn't be treated with such a laissez-faire attitude. Using a position of power for sex is something that should NEVER be acceptable. Yes it happens, but it's this acceptance by people like Byrne that allow it to continue. That this happened should incite a revolt! It shouldn't be a joke in one of Waugh's letters. Some talk about the culture of the time would have been considerate. But making a point that this is unacceptable needed to be said, and Byrne didn't. She even seemed to find it all a little piquant, especially when discussing Beauchamp and his servants. It's not piquant, it's repulsive.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The “mad” in the title of Paula Byrne’s hugely entertaining book, Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, does double duty. First in its adjectival sense, it describes the fairly boozy and socially hectic world of Evelyn Waugh; and second, it is the nickname given to Madresfield Court, the spacious country home of the 7th Earl of Beauchamp, also known as William Lygon. He lived there with his wife and seven children, and from the 11th century to the present day, the property has enjoyed the distinction of having never been sold, but only inherited by family members.

Madresfield Court becomes Brideshead Castle in Waugh’s best known novel, Brideshead Revisited. At first encounter with Mad World, readers may think they are picking up something of a traditional biographical work, but Byrne’s own words best describe her real purpose. “My aim,” she says, “by contrast to that of the ‘comprehensive’ biographer, has been to select, if I may adapt Waugh’s phrase, ‘the incidents which struck me as important’ in the genesis and aftermath of Brideshead Revisited, and relate them in a single narrative that illustrates what I believe to be the key themes of Waugh’s life.”

Byrne succeeds unequivocally in her purpose, but inevitably, we do get lots of fascinating “Waugh biography” along the way. For example, though famous as a 20th-century novelist, Waugh was also a productive biographer, journalist, and travel writer. Byrne also delves quite deeply into the motivations and emotions leading to Waugh’s conversion to Catholicism. It is also interesting to ponder how, for about ten years following Waugh’s college graduation, he was really a man of no fixed abode. His parents had a modest suburban home in Golders Green, Greater London, but Waugh effortlessly managed to spend his twenties indulging in the modern equivalent of sleeping on friends’ couches. Since members of his social network were predominantly from the aristocracy, the “couches” were typically lavish homes in town and country.

Madresfield Court, more than other haunts, was a favorite of Waugh’s, not only because he genuinely loved ancestral country homes, but because he fell in love with the entire Lygon family: the parents, three sons, and four outgoing daughters who epitomized the definition of 1920s flappers—fashionable young women preoccupied with enjoying themselves while showing scant regard for conventional standards of behavior. The love affair was mutual, for Waugh was a favorite with all Lygon family members. (Waugh fell in love with at least one other entire family, the Plunket Greens.)

Brideshead Revisited appeared almost exactly in the middle of Waugh’s lifetime fictional output. In almost all his novels, he did what I suspect all authors do, which was to write about what and whom he knew. Thus, in just about all his novels, fictional characters, places, and events are based—often not very well-disguised—on their real equivalents. His trick of creating composite characters from two or more real-life people caused both flattery and offense in those who recognized themselves in Waugh’s books. Brideshead Revisited was no exception: it was quintessentially Madresfield Court and the Lygon family.

In “Brideshead Unlocked,” the crowning chapter of Mad World, Paula Byrne brilliantly connects all the dots between fact and fiction with tangible evidence and undeniable logic. If you have already read Brideshead Revisited, Paula Byrne’s book will undoubtedly add retrospective value; if you haven’t, Mad World will likely prove irresistible temptation to read it right away.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the early novels of Evelyn Waugh simply because they are so funny, filled with epigrammatic sentences and a humor that verges on the fantastic and surreal. "Decline and Fall" is as sparkling as Voltaire's "Candide," and in some ways funnier for the twentieth-century reader, while "Vile Bodies" is a masterly period piece, the definitive satirical portrait of the 1920s "bright young things." Waugh can shock, too: Near the climax of "Black Mischief" (1932), the hero actually finds himself at a cannibal feast where he ends up eating his girlfriend.

In Mad World, Paula Byrne spends much of the book showing just how deeply the novelist drew on real people, places and events to produce his best known and most controversial novel, "Brideshead Revisited". Despite being exceptionally funny in places, "Brideshead Revisited" focuses, slowly but inexorably, on a religious theme: the working out of God's grace in human lives. In its pages Charles Ryder gradually progresses up a kind of ladder of love. Byrne pursues the autobiographical connections between Waugh, Tony Last of A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited’s Charles Ryder. One link, says Byrne, is Madresfield Court, much of its architecture used as model for both Hetton Abbey and Brideshead Castle, many of its inhabitants used as model for his characters — notably, the gay Lord Beauchamp, squire of Madresfield, inspired Tony Last, and Beauchamp’s gay son Hugh Lygon, one of those with whom Waugh had an affair while at Oxford, inspired Brideshead’s Sebastian Flyte. Byrne’s title plays off Madresfield’s informal name of Mad Court or “Madders”; her title is also inspired by the nervous breakdown of Waugh’s later years:
He went mad, began hearing voices in his head. One of them kept telling him that he was homosexual. He wasn’t — he loved women too much for that — but there is no question that the creator of Sebastian Flyte and admirer of Lord Beauchamp had one of the great bisexual imaginations of the English literary tradition.
Byrne's biography is somewhat narrow in focus, concentrating on just the first 40 years of the writer's life, and with this focus she is able to maintain a fast pace and mirror the fun of his novels. Only in her last section does the story slow, becoming somewhat academic in needlessly highlighting all the correspondences between the world of Madresfield and the world of Brideshead. But she makes her case.
As she says in her prologue, "Mad World" illuminates the obsessions that shaped Waugh's life: "the search for an ideal family and the quest for a secure faith." Her book also reminds us just how much our lives are enriched and sustained by friendships.

[charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was THE target audience for this.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never really thought literary biography was my thing, but this is the second one I've read recently and I enjoyed them both. The organizing theme of the book is EW's relationship with the aristocratic Lygon family, first the second son Hugh, whom he knew (and, Byrne hypothesthizes, perhaps slept with) at Oxford, and later Hugh's sisters, particularly Mary ("Maimie") and Dorothy ("Coote"), with whom he kept up a voluminous correspondence until his death. The family's resemblance to the Flyte family in _Brideshead Revisited_ has been remarked on before, but it was news to me. (Apparently detecting which of Waugh's characters was based on which real-life person was something of an obsession among Waugh's friends--and enemies.) Although the Hugh/Sebastian, Lord Marchmain/Beauchamp, Maimie/Julia, and Coote/Cordelia parallels are obvious, I thought sometimes Byrne overreaches in her efforts to show that (say) Beauchamp IS Lord Marchmain, especially as she herself notes repeatedly that EW never modeled his characters directly from real life. Also, the Lygons weren't Catholic, which is a rather large difference between real life and the book. (And, while it is a minor point, I think Byrnes is completely wrong when she says that the character of Lady Marchmain is "cold" and "monstrous.")

Waugh's biographers and various British literary lions say that he was a great novelist of course, but an insufferable snob and a toady to the English upper class. That image is completely at odds with what Byrne finds. The Lygon sisters and their friends seem to have absolutely adored Waugh and actively sought out his company (rather than he theirs) and his highly eccentric behavior and ribald letters don't seem calculated to curry favor.

Those who know Waugh primarily through _Brideshead Revisited_ will be interested in Byrne's depiction of the Bright Young Things, whose doings he chronicled in his first hit novel _Vile Bodies_. Waugh captured their slang and speech patterns so successfully while simultaneously embroidering it and lacing it with in-jokes that there was a sort of Joss Whedon effect in which aspiring Bright Young Things began using in real life slang that Waugh had invented for the novel. Some of the BYTs' antics were deliberately childish (treasure hunts! costume parties!) but they also consumed drugs and alcohol at such a rate that if Kid Rock, magically transported to 1920s London, had ventured into one of their parties, he would have muttered excuses and headed back to his hotel.

[Basicallyrun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting account of Waugh's relationship with the Lygon family. Byrne's theme seems to be that nearly everything in Brideshead Revisited can be traced back to the Lygons, which isn't exactly improbable - the parallels are quite extraordinary. It's a biography of an entire family - two families, really: the Waughs and the Lygons - as well as snapshots of their friends, and it's an evocative look at a period of history through that extremely focused lens.

My one gripe is Byrne's approach to sources. It's all very well to start your bibliography with what amounts to a breezy 'These are just a few interesting books I looked at, enjoy!', but it doesn't exactly reassure me that you're writing a book firmly rooted in historical fact, or even in interpretation of historical fact. Very, very few of the extracts are given a source, and there are annoying moments where Byrne says things like, 'And So-and-so's feelings can be plainly seen in his letters from the time', doesn't specify what those feelings might be and doesn't quote from the letters in question, which I find most frustrating. I mean, it's an interesting, well-written book, and one that I'd have no hesitation in giving five stars... if I could be sure it was actually factual. I have no objection to flights of fancy based on insubstantial evidence, but I want acknowledgement that that's what they are. /historian's rant

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had both good and bad parts in equal measure. For the good, as a Brideshead lover, it was enjoyable to be let in on some of the background that inspired the characters and settings. For the bad, well...ok, the bad outweighs the good. First, Byrne spends nearly a third of the book writing in agonizingly simple sentences, "Waugh met the Lygons. He went to Madresfield. They greeted him. Then they ate breakfast". etc. which drove me nearly insane (I love a good semicolon). She emphasizes the homosexuality of Lord Beauchamp and some of Waugh's friends too much, in my opinion, harping on it and going far beyond what was necessary biographically. She also leaps to impossible conclusions, like attributing Hugh's alcoholism directly to his mother's religiosity and his father's homosexuality. Having a.) never met Hugh and b.) not being an expert in alcoholism I don't think that's a factually supportable statement. Byrne also seemed bewildered by Catholicism, and (in my opinion as a Catholic) oversimplified Waugh's devotion or glossed over it. Byrne also repeats sentences and passages and leaps from person to person without having any kind of explainable segue.

As a lover of Brideshead, this book was interesting...if you're not a devotee I would go with a different biography of Waugh instead.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Byrne states from the beginning that she wants to make a themed biography of Waugh, focusing on his relationship with the Lygon family. Now admittedly I haven't read other biographies on the writer and perhaps she does skip important bits that doesn't add to this 'story' - but it doesn't seem that way. Instead it seems like a quite standard biography, where she adds comparisons to the Lygons (from long before they actually meet), and more or less skips the last twenty years of Waugh's life (or to put it correctly, writes a short summary of it).

That doesn't meant I don't like the book - it's quite interesting to read, you learn a lot and you meet some fascinating people (though Byrne's attempt to get rid of Waugh's reputation as a snob isn't really all that convincing).

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mad World is the world of the Lygon family, particularly as lived at their country estate. Evelyn Waugh was a part of that world and used elements of the lives of the Lygons and their friends in his fiction.
The author points out that this is a partial biography of Waugh and that she focuses on just a few aspects of his life. Within those limited parameters this is a very readable and enjoyable book, but it would be of limited appeal to anyone who had not read Brideshead Revisited.

[booklady]

Brideshead Revisited is one of my top ten favorite novels.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must reading for the Waugh fan. Some new material, most familiar, but very engagingly retold.

[Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

England’s most bad-tempered man was without doubt one of its most talented writers: a hilarious and brilliant figure. Brideshead Revisited alone would secure his place, but his life and personality were equally fascinating — a deep window into both the background of the novel and some of the most interesting characters of his age. Of particular interest is the fate and personality of Lord Beauchamp. Sad, well-executed, and above all immensely funny, the book offers many unforgettable anecdotes.
A few of the most memorable:
·When confronted about his infamous temper, Waugh replied: “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I were not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.”
·On first tasting Tokaji wine, he declared it was like discovering a new primary color.
·When offered a wartime posting in the Balkans, he accepted under the eccentric belief that “Because he is barely known outside the Balkans, Tito must be a woman — and a lesbian for that matter!” He would later refer to the Partisan leader as “the nanny.”
·Setting off on a picnic with an attractive woman, he realized he had no suitable glasses for the two bottles of champagne he was bringing. His solution? He packed an entire fine porcelain service and the pair wen't on to drink from that. drank from that.
·His irritation with the Vatican over the annulment of his first marriage — which he entered in a fit of “short-term delusion” — produced a series of impatient and very funny letters.

One, if not the most enjoyable biographies I've read.

4.5*

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging and readable account of Evelyn Waugh's relationship with members of the Lygon family - first Hugh, a contemporary of his at Oxford, and then Hugh's sisters at their family home Madresfield - and the influence of the family upon Brideshead Revisited, Waugh's most famous work.

I must admit I was rather anxious when I read in the Prologue "Charles Ryder manifestly is Evelyn Waugh." A reason I rarely read literary biographies is the tendency to equate characters who only exist in a limited context because of the author with living human beings who had lives of their own including other experiences, other relationships etc. Fortunately, however, Byrne ultimately provides a more balanced (and interesting) analysis of how Waugh formed 'composite' characters from mixing attributes and experiences of more than one acquaintance, and of course by adding his own creative imagination.

The story that Byrne reveals is fascinating, full of passion, beauty and tragedy, but also of Waugh's warm and generous friendship with the whole family. He comes across as witty and charming, sometimes immature with his liking for silly nicknames, but by no means snobbish or arrogant. Byrne also deals sensitively and intelligently with Waugh's Catholicism and its influence on the events in Brideshead

Overall I didn't learn much that I hadn't read before, but I enjoyed the different perspective on Waugh's writing and the man himself.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“That day is wasted on which we have not laughed.”

[Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable biography of Evelyn Waugh, focusing on his relationship with the aristocratic Lygon family, the model for the Marchmains of Brideshead. The roaring twenties really make for the smuttiest biographies. It was all debauchery, all the time. Hard drugs, jazz, all-night partying, sex with friends, sex with footmen, sex with prostitutes. And they managed to combine all that with being devout Catholics.

I found these people fascinating and wanted to know more about each and every one of them, except Hugh Lygon, the model for Sebastian, who was a dull, hopeless dipsomaniac. The book is packed with fabulous anecdotes, many of which found their way into Waugh's novels. Take the time two of the Lygon sisters were out partying in London, were locked out of their town house, traipsed over to Whitehall in the middle of the night and knocked on the door of 10 Downing Street (they were kindly welcomed, too). Or how about the mean-spirited note Lord Beauchamp's brother-in-law sent him after driving him out of the country: “Dear Bugger-in-law, You got what you deserved. Yours, Westminster”. Burn! These people, I tell you. There is almost too much gossip to handle. Blink and you miss some interesting tidbits, like who took Barbara Cartland's virginity.

I've not read other Waugh biographies, but it seems Byrne mostly uses old material. She unveils a few previously unknown facts, but these are not terribly interesting. For instance, she reveals the records detailing exactly what kind of sex old Beauchamp was having with his footmen, which is the kind you'd expect two men to have (I mean there were no gag balls or sex swings or anything like that). So, if you're a Waugh expert you probably know most of this stuff already. If not, this is a very amusing introduction to the man and his times. Unless, of course, you dislike privileged, self-entitled snobs who walk all over people in a drunken stupor, in which case you may find yourself annoyed. Me, I love this shit.

[Alistair · Rating 4 out of 5]

there have been plenty of biographies of Evelyn Waugh and this one concentrates primarily on his lifelong friendships with the Lygon family and the fellow students he met at Oxford .
Waugh's love of stately homes is well known but a lot of this book revolves around the stately homos that he came across particularly Earl Beauchamp the pater familias of the Lygon family who after a long career with various footmen and butlers etc was hounded out of England by his brother in law .
Waugh arrived in Oxford as an outsider because of his middle class background but through his personality and talent became a central player in the world of Bright Young Things . Most of his contemporaries were wealthy offspring of the upper class but of all of them Waugh was the most successful and talented . The Actons , lygons , Howards and Plunkett Greens mostly ended dissolute failures .
This biography traces the relationship between Waugh and the various Lygons and how Brideshead Revisited used the family for source material .
I enjoyed it all despite the fact that although Waugh became a bit of a parody of himself and the upper class milieu that he so admired he was a fascinating complex person and there is more to him than the curmudgeonly snob personality he cultivated . . They may have had some serious deficiencies but their respect for tradition , stoic philosophy and sheer panache and independence were admirable . Brideshead Revisited was an elegy for a vanished world and this biography is the same . I enjoyed it .

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mad World by Paula Byrne is a biography of the writer Evelyn Waugh. By the author’s admission, it is by no means a complete biography, but one which focuses on the experiences and relationships that provided the material for Waugh’s great novel, Brideshead Revisited, as well as several others such Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust. The book engrossed me from page one and I found it hard to put down.
I first read Waugh in college when A Handful of Dust was assigned as part of a 20th century novel course, and moved on to Brideshead Revisited some years later just before it became a Masterpiece Classic. Enhanced by eloquent writing and biting humor, his characters and plots are often unforgettable. The ending of A Handful of Dust has haunted me for years. So it was with real fascination that I read about the real life eccentrics and adventurers upon which he based that ending, as well as his close relationship with Lygon family of Maderesfield who became the Flytes of Brideshead.

As with most satire, Waugh’s stories seem exaggerated and improbable. What intrigued me most about this book was that the reality was often more improbable than the fiction. I highly recommend this book to anyone, whether you have read these books or not. It is a great story

[Helene · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult for me to be detached and objective when reviewing anything having to do with "Brideshead Revisited". The first half of that book is probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. The second half I'm still wrestling with, not because of Waugh's writing, just because I find it overwhelmingly depressing. Nonetheless, it is easily my favorite book and, has been since before the BBC series.

Anyhow, at one time I'd read pretty much ever bio of Waugh both for interest and for classes that I'd taken. So I was excited to read this book (don't ask why it sat on my shelves for 2 years...). And I wasn't let down. Byrne doesn't pull any punches and it's nice to see a Waugh bio given a contemporary treatment (i.e., a lot more can be discussed in 2013 than could be in the times of earlier bios).

I do kind of wish that the last 70 pages or so could have been expanded, but then I already knew a lot of the history surrounding Waugh's life that made up the earlier parts of the book. It was the specific focus on the Brideshead text that I was after and what is there was fascinating.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admittedly, it was rather stupid of me to read this when I couldn't remember whether or not I had read Brideshead Revisited. I have read some Waugh novels, but I don't believe I read this one. But it was well-written and interesting as a look on a particular culture milieu, and as a portrayal of how one writer was inspired by life. It certainly made me want to read more of Waugh, Particularly, of course, Brideshead. Byrne certainly demonstrates that mockery can be generated from great love and affection. I was interested in her discussion of how so many of his friends not only tolerated his, often not quite flattering, fictionalized "portrayals" of themselves, but defended him to the end. I also thought it was a beautiful portrait of one "created" family--our family ties are not always based on blood relations.

[Victoria Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mad is short for the house Waugh based Brideshead on in Brideshead Revisited and the Lygon family whose father Lord Beauchamp was hounded out of England. The book gives parallels in a very entertaining and compelling way between Waugh's life and Hugh's - from prep school, then Lancing (Waugh) and Oxford, where he met the "Eton" set of Hugh Lygon and his friends. Many incidents are exactly the same, although some characters are a composite. Waugh has been misjudged, in that he was not as crusty and snobbish as made out to be. He was actually very funny and had firm friendships all his life. The story is one of wealth and privilege tinged with sadness. He was quite an adventurer, - apart from his war experiences, he went deep into the Brazilian forests and on a dangerous polar expedition. Unputdownable.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

My overall impression is that the author is not very good at organizing her material. The book is not badly written, but the constant attention to the more titillating details (and there are many) was wearying. I found the ending rather abrupt and much less detail was given for the later parts of the lives of the people involved. The author had a deadline and had to speed things up?

[Beth (bibliobeth) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit of a beginner where Evelyn Waugh is concerned having only read two of his previous novels. The author focuses on the Lygon family, who were the inspiration for Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited. I enjoyed reading about this period in Waugh's life, and it was nice to hear favourable accounts of him for a change!

Please see my full review at http://bibliobeth.wordpress.com