Auberon Waugh - Literary Career

Literary Career

Waugh wrote five novels before giving up writing fiction, partly in protest at the inadequate money authors received from public lending rights at libraries and partly because he knew he would always be compared unfavourably to his father. The five novels are:

• The Foxglove Saga (1960)
• Path of Dalliance (1963)
• Who Are The Violets Now? (1965)
• Consider the Lilies (1968)
• A Bed of Flowers (1972).

He also wrote a book about the Thorpe case, The Last Word. He made several programmes for ATV in the 1970s.

In 1986 his critical book Another Voice – An Alternative Anatomy of Britain (ISBN 0-947752-71-4) was published and was well received. From that year until his death he also edited the Literary Review magazine, where he organised awards for what he called "real" (i.e. rhyming and scanning) poetry, and also a Bad Sex Award for the worst description of sex in a novel.

Two collections of Waugh's Private Eye Diary have been published: Four Crowded Years: The Diaries of Auberon Waugh 1972–1976 (Deutsch/Private Eye, 1976), and A Turbulent Decade: The Diaries of Auberon Waugh 1976–1985 (Private Eye, 1985).

In 1991 he was interviewed by Anthony Howard for the Thames TV documentary Waugh Memorial.

He also opined on many and various topics. For example, in a leader piece for the Literary Review in 1991 he commented upon sceptic James Randi´s rubbishing on British television of the supposed art of dowsing for water. Waugh noted that, although he had no great interest in the subject, as a matter of fact he lived in a house which had a well sunk through 70 ft (21 m) of rock on nothing more than the advice of a dowser.