EVELYN WAUGH'S GAY WORLD

Auberon (son), Evelyn Waugh, Laura (2nd wife), Margaret, Maria Teresa, Harriet, James and Michael.

The British novelist Evelyn Waugh studied at Oxford university.

The poet John Betjeman said: 'Everyone was queer at Oxford in those days!'

Evelyn's gay friend Tom Driberg, later a Labour MP and spy, said that Evelyn enjoyed 'some lively and drunken revels - mainly homosexual in character.'

Evelyn's 'first homosexual love' was with Richard Pares, a student at Oxford.

The Oxford historian A. L. Rowse was a fan of Richard Pares's 'red kissable lips'.

(Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited, by Philip Eade, Weidenfeld & Nicolson / dailymail)


Alastair Graham, left, with Evelyn Waugh 

In 1923, the 19-year-old Evelyn fell in love with an 18-year-old student called Alastair Graham.

The writer and scholar Harold Acton wrote to Evelyn and Alastair: 'I had erections to think of you two angels in an atmosphere salinated with choir boys and sacerdotal sensuality!'

Alastair Graham was Sebastian in Evelyn's novel 'Brideshead Revisited'.

(Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited, by Philip Eade, Weidenfeld & Nicolson / dailymail)


In Evelyn Waugh's Bridehead Revisted, Charles Ryder, at Oxford University, becomes friends with Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of  Lord Marchmain. Plot

Brideshead is inspired partly by Evelyn's friendship with Lord Beauchamp of the Lygon family.

The gay Lord Beauchamp became a government minister under Prime Minister Asquith.

Lord Beauchamp is supposed to have been the model for Sebastian's father Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited.

Lord Beauchamp, who had numerous gay affairs with servants, socialites and local lads. King George V's sons [3] sons Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and George, Duke of Kent, were friends of Beauchamp.

Alastair Graham's mother was a wealthy American.

His father, Hugh Graham, was the son of a baronet and the grandson of the 12th Duke of Somerset.

Alastair became a diplomat.

In Athens, Alastair was honorary attaché to the British Minister, Sir Percy Loraine.

Loraine 'had an affair with the young Francis Bacon'.

When Evelyn visited Alastair in Athens, he found that the flat was 'usually full of dreadful Dago youths… who sleep with the English colony for 25 drachmas a night'.

(Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited, by Philip Eade, Weidenfeld & Nicolson / dailymail)

...

"In 1954 the novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) set off from England on a cruise ship bound for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). 

"A week later, for reasons only apparent to himself, he disembarked at Port Said, on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, and travelled overland to Cairo before flying to Colombo. 

"The reasons behind this capriciousness are outlined in his 1957 quasi-autobiographical novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. 

"Mr Pinfold, a corpulent English author of some renown, finds the longed-for tranquillity of his own cruise to Ceylon shattered by the intrusion of an unseen cast of voices, musical bands, and a dog. 

"Unable to distinguish these auditory hallucinations from reality he flees the ship in fear for his life and returns home to his long-suffering wife. When the voices follow him even to London he comes to realise what has happened."

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold