Customer Reviews

Labels (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

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This delightful book describes an extended tour around the mainly Mediterranean Europe of the inter-World War years - it is in fact describing Waugh's own heavily disguised honeymoon. The resulting book gained much praise and interest...
"the new book that interests me most this week is Labels ... less for any outstanding merits it may possess than from the fact that I wrote it myself" as the author himself wrote in review!

Full of that marvelous inherited family wit, the book contains several favorite sentences, often quoted or at least partly remembered by fans of this family's writing. A gushing encounter at a tony cocktail party:
"..I love your books so much I never travel without them.. I keep them in a row by my bed."
"..by any chance you are not confusing me with my brother, Alec? He has written many more books than I.'
"Yes, of course. What's your name then?"
"Evelyn."
"But... they said you wrote!"
"Well, yes I do a little. You see I couldn't get any other sort of job".
Evelyn adds ruefully that he wondered if she would add Labels to the row by her bed.

Another gem, perhaps the most famous paragraph written in the entire genre of travel...
"I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountains almost invisible in a blur of pastel grey, glowing on the top ... the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky." Then the final sentence: "Nothing I have seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting."

A wonderful romping read.