The Evelyn Waugh BBC Radio Drama Collection

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of Europe, the Near East, Africa and tropical America, and published a number of travel books, including Labels (1930), Remote People (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934) and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936).
In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. When the Going was Good and The Loved One preceded Men at Arms, which came out in 1952, the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour' trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961. In 1964 he published his last book, A Little Learning, the first volume of an autobiography. Evelyn Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1930 and his biography of the Elizabethan Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1936. In 1959 he published the official Life of Ronald Knox. For many years he lived with his wife and six children in the West Country. He died in 1966.

Waugh said of his work: 'I regard writing not as investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me.' Mark Amory called Evelyn Waugh 'one of the five best novelists in the English language this century', while Harold Acton described him as having 'the sharp eye of a Hogarth alternating with that of the Ancient Mariner'.

Jeremy Front is an award winning writer, actor and broadcaster. He studied Fine Art (Painting) at Goldsmith’s, University of London and Central St. Martin’s School of Art.

His first feature length screenplay was shortlisted for the Oxford Film Foundation Prize and first theatre pieces were musical/sketch revues, co-written with his sister, Rebecca Front. Four Times Four, a collection of monologues for women was staged by the RSC in Stratford as part of their New Writing Season.

Jeremy has written extensively for radio and television moving between original and adaptations in both drama and comedy. Work for BBC Radio includes the comedy series: Jack and Millie, seven series of Incredible Women (nominated BBC Audio Drama Award) in both of which he co-stars with Rebecca Front, and the long-running radio comedy series The Charles Paris Mysteries starring Bill Nighy. Jeremy has adapted and dramatized work by Graham Greene Stamboul Train, Elizabeth Gaskell Mr. Harrison’s Confession, John Meade Faulkner The Lost Stradivarius, Anita Loos Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Nominated and Finalist for a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award), Chekov The Duel and Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, Scoop, Brideshead Revisited and The Sword of Honour Trilogy (Winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award).