Alec Waugh

Waugh was born in London to Arthur Waugh (1866-1943) and Catherine Charlotte Raban, a great-granddaughter of Lord Cockburn (1779–1854). Another distinguished ancestor was his great-great-grandfather  William Morgan FRS (1750–1833), a pioneer of actuarial science who served The Equitable Life Assurance Society for 56 years and who won the Copley Medal in 1789.^[1] Among ancestors bearing the Waugh name, the Rev. Alexander Waugh D.D. (1754–1827) was a minister in the Secession Church of Scotland who helped found the London Missionary Society and was one of the leading Nonconformist preachers of his day.^[2] His grandson Alexander Waugh (1840–1906) was a country medical practitioner, who bullied his wife and children and became known in the Waugh family as "the Brute". The elder of Alexander's two sons, born in 1866, was Alec's father, Arthur.^[3]

Alec was educated at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset. The result of his experiences was his first, semi-autobiographical novel, The Loom of Youth (July 1917), in which he dramatised his schooldays. The book was inspired by Arnold Lunn's The Harrovians, published in 1913 and discussed at some length in The Loom of Youth.^[4]

The Loom of Youth was so controversial at the time (it mentioned homosexual relationships between boys, albeit in a very understated, staid fashion) that Waugh remains the only former pupil to be dismissed from the old boys' society (The Old Shirburnian Society). It was also a best seller.^[5] (The Society's website gives a different version: Alec and his father resigned and were not reinstated until 1933, while Evelyn went to a different school). Robert Graves wrote in a letter sent from Liverpool to his friend Siegfried Sassoon, dated 9 September 1917, “That “Loom of Youth” book is amazingly good: I might have written it myself – no that sounds wrong but you understand: what a reckless man to write and publish it ! He is old Gosse’s nephew or something and Gosse was very shy about it till he heard that it was in its fifth edition when he changed his tune.”^[6] In 1932, the book was again the subject of controversy when Wyndham Lewis's Doom of Youth seemed to suggest that Waugh's interest in schoolboys was because he was a homosexual. This was settled out of court.^[7] In the mid-1960s, Alec donated the original manuscript, press clippings and correspondence with the publisher to the Society.^[8]

Waugh served in the British army in France during the First World War, being commissioned in the Dorset Regiment in May 1917,^[9] and seeing action at Passchendaele. Captured by the Germans near Arras in March 1918, he spent the rest of the war in prisoner-of-war camps in Karlsruhe and in the Mainz Citadel. Waugh married his first wife, Barbara Annis Jacobs (1900–1996), in 1919.^[10]

He later had a career as a successful author, although never as successful or innovative as that of his younger brother. He lived much of his life overseas, in exotic places such as Tangier – a lifestyle made possible by his second marriage in 1932 to a rich Australian, Joan Chirnside, only child and heiress of Andrew Spence Chirnside (1856-1934) of Edrington, Berwick, Victoria and Vite Vite, Derrinallum, Victoria,^[11] nephew of Thomas Chirnside. His work, possibly in consequence, tended to be reminiscent of W. Somerset Maugham, although without achieving Maugham's huge popular success. Nevertheless, his 1955 novel Island in the Sun was a best-seller. It was filmed in 1957 as Island in the Sun, securing from Hollywood the greatest amount ever paid for the use of a novel at that time.^[12] His 1973 novel A Fatal Gift was also a success. Despite these successes, his waggish nephew Auberon once joked that Waugh "wrote many books, each worse than the last."^[13][14]

Waugh served in the British army during the Second World War as an Intelligence Officer. He was posted to France (serving under Gerald Wellesley, his Hampshire neighbour), Syria, the Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq, ending the War with the rank of Major.^[15]

He was a wine connoisseur, and published In Praise of Wine & Certain Noble Spirits (1959), a light-hearted and discursive guide to the major wine types, and Wines and Spirits, a 1968 book in the Time-Life series Foods of the World.^[16]

In 1969, Waugh married the author Virginia Sorensen, and they resided together in Morocco, then moved to the United States as his health failed. He died in Florida at the age of 83.

• Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family; by Alexander Waugh, 2004.
• New York Life: Of Friends and Others; by Brendan Gill, 1994.

• Works by Alec Waugh at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Alec Waugh at the Internet Archive
• Alec Waugh and The Loom of Youth at Sherborne School Archives
• Finding aid to Alec Waugh papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.