I really enjoyed this analysis of the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh's books, though I think they put too much emphasis on Brideshead in yhe title and the text. as she actually discussed most of his books. I was given Scoop to read when I was in high school and didn't get it. Having read this book, I think I was too inexperienced and didn't have enough history for it to make sense. I'm looking forward to reading Brideshead next, and then maybe some of the others. ( )

Fascinating book about the life of Evelyn Waugh and the family that inspired Brideshead Revisted. ( )

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, for one, am very glad that she did. Paula Byrne eschews the "cradle to grave" approach, instead focussing on those key moments in Evelyn Waugh's life, and in particular those that informed his work.

A few weeks before reading 'Mad World: Evelyn Waugh And The Secrets Of Brideshead', I read and thoroughly enjoyed 'Brideshead Revisited'. 'Brideshead Revisited' is an absorbing and sumptuous eulogy for the end of the golden age of the British aristocracy and, if you haven't read it yet, I envy you. I recommend reading both books fairly closely together. I felt I gained a lot from having Brideshead fresh in my mind. That said, I found I also gained plenty of interesting insights into other Evelyn Waugh books I'd read (Decline and Fall, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and Black Mischief) - some of which I read many years ago.

'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's friends asked him how he got away with using real life models for fictional characters, his reply was that you can draw any character as near as you want and no offence will be taken provided you say that he is attractive to women. That may be so, however there must have been plenty of people portrayed in Evelyn Waugh's fiction, particularly those he disliked, who would surely have taken offence. The other 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. One 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. Before reading this biography I was already convinced that Evelyn Waugh was one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century. After reading 'Mad World: Evelyn Waugh And The Secrets Of Brideshead', I feel I understand him better and feel 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 I feel sure you'll devour this biography - as I did. ( )

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. ( )

Evelyn Waugh used his entire life and those of his friends as copy for his many novels, so this literary biography that concentrates on his years in Oxford and through World War II is an excellent decoder ring to the novels from his most prolific and best-written period. As the title suggests, the bulk of the book concentrates on his relationship with the Lygon family who were the models for the Marchmains, and their beautiful home of Madresfield, the model for Brideshead.

Now that I've read this book, I want to go back & read Brideshead Revisited again. I think I'll understand many of the nuances much better. ( )