Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

· HarperPress · Narrated by Jonathan Keeble
Audiobook
15 hr 8 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 14 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited”.

Evelyn Waugh was already famous when “Brideshead Revisited” was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no ‘immediate propaganda value’. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith – an elegy for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier.

The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts, the Marchmains, in “Brideshead Revisited”. William Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, was a warm-hearted, generous and unconventional father whose seven children adored him. When he was forced to flee the country by his scheming brother-in-law, his traumatised children stood firmly by him, defying not only the mores of the day, but also their deeply religious mother.

In this engrossing biography, bestselling author Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through the friendships and loves that mattered most to him. She uncovers a man who, far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, was as loving and complex as the family that inspired him. This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name.

About the author

Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool, where she is a Research Fellow in English Literature. Her first book, “Jane Austen and the Theatre”, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize. Her second book, “Perdita”, was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, she lives in Warwickshire with her three young children and her husband, the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

More by Paula Byrne

Similar audiobooks

Narrated by Jonathan Keeble