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Sword of Honour Trilogy (Everyman Classics)

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When these books came out a number of reviewers thought that Waugh had lost his touch. Perhaps the atmosphere of the swinging sixties did not lend to itself a real understanding of the greatness of this work. In my opinion this work represents one of Waugh's major works. While it does not cover every aspect of World War Two (Proust did not feel the need to fight out every battle of World War One either), it does provide a kind of summing up of the state of Britain and what happened to former ruling class, a body that provoked feelings of great affinity from Waugh, even though he was a product of the upper middle class.

The key to understanding Waugh, not just this book, but also all of the others is his distrust of the 20th century. He came of age during the 1920s and biographers have noted an early fascination with the pre-Raphaelites. Although this artistic brotherhood focused on life in the pre-industrial age Waugh the satirist brought his powers to bear on the post World War I modern world its mores and hypocrasies. World War Two brought high taxes and democracy to this admired world of the British gentry and Waugh correctly chronicles this in his summary of the war in the trilogy.
The book is also a wonderful social satire drawing portraits of many of Waugh's own circle including Diana Mosley (With the fascist sympathies air brushed out here) Cyril Connolly and others. He marks the fall of the aristocratic officer and the rise of the "Trimmers" of the world whose heroism is more a result of luck and press puffing than genuine achievement.
The turning point in the book is the Crete campaign. Here British high born leadership collapses finally. Waugh sees this military failure coupled with the subsequent alliance with Bolshevik Russia to be one of the failures of the war. The so-called "Stalingrad sword" which appears as a character in its own right is symbollic of the passing away of the former way of life. It is not surprising that Waugh kills off the saintly Mr. Couchback (the hero's father) at this point in the book to provide a last hurrah for the old Catholic landed gentry.

The book is replete with a full gallary of comic characters. My favorite Apthorpe is unfortunately killed off in the first novel. To detail the reasons would be to deprive future of readers of the genuine pleasure in encountering him in the novels. However despite this absence in the two subsequent volumes, there are plenty to keep one amused. My second favorite of Virginia Troy, who is the ex-wife of our hero, Guy Crouchback. It is entertaining to watch this very worldly woman make her way through war-time Britain. There is Ludovic, the aspirant writer, enlisted man and probably the personification of the future post-war world with his trite novel "The Death Wish." Finally there is Trimmer, a former barber who becomes a hero because Britain needed one who was working class (at least in the opinion of HO HQ).

This is a major work by Waugh and probably his best book after "A Handful of Dust." In many ways it is superior to the earlier masterpiece in that provides Waugh with a wider canvas to express himself. This is a must for all readers of Waugh.

Guy Crouchback is almost saintly. He is Catholic, patriotic, and selfless. When World War II comes along he is eager to serve his country and to be thrown into the caldron of war. But, by his own admission, he is not "simpatico" and he always seems to be the square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Perhaps his military career parallels that of the author, Evelyn Waugh.

There is of course no place for Guy in the British Army where his hard work and dedication are little rewarded and his war experiences are spotted with malfortune, little of which is of his own making. Guy "blots his copy book" early on and ends up being suspected of spying for the Italians. Waugh dots this novel with a cast of clownish characters and comic adventures in which Guy sadly participates.

Waugh's irreverent attitude toward World War II has probably made this novel less popular than it should have been. For example, at the opening of the war, Crouchback wonders why England, in the face of simultaneous invasions of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, chose to go to war with one and not the other. At another point, Guy muses that "he was engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause were quite irrelevant to the issue." In the best Waughian tradition, he does a hatchet job on the much-celebrated Yugoslav resistance movement of Marshall Tito.

Waugh, oddly enough, has also made the interesting comment that he wrote the "obituary" of the Roman Catholic Church in England with this novel. I take him at his word although perhaps I can't fully appreciate the Catholic subtleties of the novel.

Waugh originally published this novel in three volumes between 1952 and 1962. He then published the three volumes in one, omitting "tedious" passages. One of the tedious passages he omitted was, to me, the most memorable of the book -- the tale of children evacuated from London at the beginning of the war and thrust, with hilarious consequences, upon the country gentry for caretaking. So, you might read the novels -- Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of the Battle -- separately as well as together.

Beyond thrillers, World War II doesn't seem to have inspired a lot of good novels. Waugh's comic, sad, and cynical novel is one of the best.

Smallchief

Great fun. The sort of thing that you read in the study with an open fire, a glass of 10 year old port and a cigar smouldering in the ashtray, the Great Dane snoring in the corner next to the mahogany sideboard.

Or that's the image that the book throws up.

I really enjoyed the book, wit in bucketfuls with an irony and a poignancy that had me chuckling away in time to the Great Danes' snoring.

Waugh takes you to the world of officers and gentlemen that he obviously experienced during his own wartime service- the injustice, the inept leadership and the crazed bravado of some of those around him. The waiting, the rumour, the boredom, the politics and luck, both good and bad are all major players in this book. The class system of officers and privates- all of the ingredients that make a Waugh book are here.

Oh yeah: and he fully describes and realises the insignificance of one soldier in the great scheme of things in an army, no matter how hard that one man wants to make a real difference.

Watch out for the exploits of the great Richie Hook- comic relief and so incredibly un-PC it will make you winch and laugh at the same time

Though "Brideshead Revisited" may be his best known work, nothing conveys Waugh's sense of the world better than "The Sword of Honour" trilogy.

His sacramental view of earthly reality is best expressed in a memorable exchange between Guy Crouchback, the book's protagonist, and an obviously overwhelmed Anglican minister.

"... Do you agree," [Guy] asked earnestly, "that the Supernatural Order is not something added to the Natural Order, like music or painting, to make everday life more tolerable? It is everyday life. The supernatural is real; what we call 'real' is a mere shadow, a passing fancy. Don't you agree, Padre?"

"Up to a point." [said the Padre]

Sadly, Alfred A. Knopf's Everyman's Library, a collection of books intended to preserve and popularize the classics of modern literature, isn't up to the task. The binding is stiff and cheap, and the gold embossed lettering on the cover literally disintegrates in your hands. I bought this book hoping it would last a lifetime, but I'll be lucky if it survives the coming year.

Read Waugh for the tonic that he is, but avoid the Everyman's Library like the publishing plague that it is.

The best of Evelyn Waugh works, this trilogy is the perfect combination of story and history. Waugh's actual experience during the war leaves its mark all over the place, as well as his particular brand of humor - and his distaste for communism. Great read for anyone who wants to be entertained by a touching story, and see how the war was fought by the British, and why they turned against Churchill when it was won. Even if you don't care about any of that, the jokes are still fantastic, and most of the characters are brilliantly developed. They don't make novels like these ones anymore.

Waugh, is an acquired taste. The Trilogy, now just published as one book was originally made up of the following

"Men at Arms" -- here we are introduced to Mr. Guy Crouchback, the Catholic survivor of an old, disgarded, and increasing impoverished patrician family in England at the beginning of the War. Guy is not so much interested in getting into the war as he is in finding his own place in this war. He's 35 and too old for the line regiments and not of the right "stuff" for the special guards regiments. By a fluke he ends up in the mythical Royal Halbedier Regt. as an officer cadet. In his entire time here we find the class system transposed more or less intact into the army, where incompetence and pure idiosyncracy is rewarded and individuality discouraged.

We find a gallery of both lovable and boffish rouges. We find the classic British Army hard-man psychopath Brigadier Hook. And we find the taudry and often tragic relationships shaped by a system they may be able to hide from, but from whose moral sanction they cannot escape.

Guy gets selected for the ill-fated Dakar expedition. He makes a name of himself by secretly raiding the coast held by the Free French. He does so under Brig. Hook's mischevious order. After he and Hook return to be court-martialed, Guy finds himself once again a perrenial outsider. (Also please note the absolutely hillarious chapter where Guy attempts to seduce his divorced wife).

"Officers And Gentleman"

Guy is back and he and Brig Hook are promoted for audicity "in the face of the enemy" -- by Churchill and posted to a new Commando type group training on a remote island in Scotland. Guy and friends get into more trouble than training and find themselves all geared up for Crete and land just long enough to find out that they are defeated and need to be withdrawn.

"Unconditional Surrender"

Where Guy is landed to support the Tito's partisans. He finds out that people he is supporting, appear to be little different in their extreme methods than the fascists he is trying to overthrow.

Through all the books there is the slow pervading rot of the English class system fighting it last battle against fascism. A battle that must be faught, but one whose hard cynical questions Guy is already asking himself -- what about Stalin... he appears to be a frightful rotter, killing people because of their class, constantly getting screwed the class system, Guy advances by luck, and incomptence seems to reign and strategy made on according to what comes to mind in the heads of the brass hats... All the while his Catholicism is also hanging on for dear life... ready to take a plunge off the cliff of aetheism.

Since Waugh actually faught in most of the campaigns he describes, we need to take him seriously. But he is ultimately not a more accurate source for the events of WWII, but rather a anti-hero, cynical view of the events -- more a counter balance to the guts and glory stereotype, but not necessarily more correct or accurate.

For those who are not so familiar with pre-war British speech and do not know what a Bangalore Torpedo is, or what it means to "blot your book" there may be a few problems. I can see some American readers having a bit of a time with the vocabulary. At its most brilliant however Waugh offers us a great view of life and people, with all their problems, in a way that we perhaps would rather not think of them. It is a tour-de-force of a book... stays with you for a rather long time.

I read this after it was listed in the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best novels about World War II. I'd have to agree.

Guy Crouchback, a bit too old for service, nonetheless manages to obtain a commission and become an officer at the beginning of the war. The stories wander from England during the Blitz to Greece and the Balkans. During this time he experiences the frustrations of dealing with the Army bureaucracy and the sometime futility of its actions. This is painted against a background of Crouchback's Catholicism and his need to see things through that particular lens.

Waugh's prose is, as always, wonderful. The structure of these novels is not as tight as some of his others such as 'Brideshead Revisited', and the humor isn't as darkly biting as 'The Loved One', but it's an immensely satisfying read nevertheless. One minor cavil: the references to historical and political events will eventually date this novel. I'm fairly well read about WWII and wartime England, but many of the allusions escape me. A series of this caliber really cries out for an annotated edition.

This Everyman's Library edition is nicely laid out and is quite readable. The introductory essay and time-line are helpful, but a footnoted edition would be even nicer.

Like Waughs other books this is a black Comedy dripping with cynicism, cruelty, sarcasm, racial prejudice and snobism. It is not just many of the characters who are this way but the author too who clearly identifies with the books anti-hero the aristocratic, pious and somewhat depressed Guy Crouchback. He is a descent sort of course, and the working class lads who want to succeed such as Trimmer are not but how could it be otherwise in a Waugh book?

Having said all that the book works, it is very funny and a refreshingly cynical look at the British war effort which has tended to be somewhat romanticized. If you are starting with Waugh then I would go for one of the shorter novels first to see if he is your cup of tea. If you know and like Waugh then this trilogy will not disappoint you....

"The Sword of Honor" is deep in irony and satire from its very title to the last page of the third novel included in the trilogy. The absurdities of the British class structure, the vagaries of war, the frequency of human folly and the limits of virtue and of moral constancy in a world that values neither very much--these are the foundations of this rambling epic novel that covers the war years of 1939-1945, with an epilogue a few years later.

From time to time, the reader sees flashes of "Catch-22" in the sections that detail the combat experiences of the book's protagonist, Guy Crouchback. Crouchback is the witness to all of the really awful things that transpired during the war, and often the victim of much of it. However, with all of author Evelyn Waugh's eloquent cynicism that is the main substance of "The Sword of Honor", he does allow for some redemption and reward for this one character who stays true to himself throughout the novel. That isn't to say that Crouchback is particularly sympathetic to a modern reader, but he is certainly more so than most of the rest of the dozens of characters that populate the trilogy.

This is a wonderful book that still had plenty of zing and meaning. Highly recommended.

Evelyn Waugh has produced a fine trilogy of books; Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of Battle. These books are consolidated into The Sword of Honour Trilogy. The work is not useful for the study of the Second World War as it is fiction, but it is hard to beat for humor and pure reading enjoyment. Even though I usually don't read fiction I found that following the ups and downs of Guy Crouchback provided hours of fun. The WWII background to the books helped garner my interest as well.