Evelyn Waugh ‘had gay affairs at Oxford’

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  1. Well, this is all publicity, I expect. We’ll have to wait until the book comes out and the academics disect and evaluate the evidence that Ms. Byrne says she has unearthed. If it is conclusive and unavoidably true then GREAT. Tories absolutely adore, darling, Evelyn Waugh, the epitome of quintessential Englishness. Lovely if we can have him ranked alongside dear Oscar Wilde!

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  2. Vincent Poffley  14 Aug 2009, 5:49pm  Report
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    Three affairs? Bastard. I’ve been here at Oxford nigh on seven years and I haven’t managed to have one. Bastard, bastard, bastard…

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  3. Isn’t there still a GaySoc, Vincent? I remember the GaySoc meetings at Oxford well and the interaction in the pub afterwards was pretty well skewed towards who was going off with whom! Surely it’s still going today.

    Anyway, consider that you wouldn’t possibly have contributed such excellent posts to PinkNews if you were engulfed in Oxonian shenanigans night noon and day?

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  4. Vincent Poffley  14 Aug 2009, 7:13pm  Report
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    It’s called LGBTSoc now. And you’re right, it’s just the same as you describe. Sadly, though, I miss out every time in the “who’s going off with whom” bit…

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  5. Vincent, oh dear, well, I’m unfortunately unable to advise as to how it’s done these days! Times have changed radically. From what I gather the current style may involve sidling up to somebody and daring to put a hand round their waist . . . or maybe even, more directly, quietly murmuring, “Fancy a shag?” :-)

    Maybe just hang back in the shadows, watch like a hawk, and see what the current mode is!

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  6. Brian Burton  15 Aug 2009, 6:28am  Report
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    Times must have changed for the Ivy covered Professors in Ivy covered Halls. Oscar Wilde, Bosie and Robbie Ross. All sat and dreamed under the dreaming spires of Oxford. Looking for Love with another like-minded Boy, was the Jolly past time indeed. Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

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  7. I have been a great fan of Evelyn Waugh’s writing ever since I read all his books at university in the 1950s and chose him as special subject for my English degree.

    I was intrigued to find the gay characters in his books, as well as those of Isherwood.

    His early books are hilarious satires and Vile Bodies (filmed by Stephen Fry as The Bright Young Things)includes a gay character, Miles Malpractice. Besides Sebastian and his teddy bear, Brideshead Revisited has the outrageous Anthony Blanche splendidly played in the TV dramatisation by an actor whose name escapes me.

    That said, I think Waugh was a frightful snob and all in all a rather nasty character.

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  8. Jean-Paul Bentham  16 Aug 2009, 3:48pm  Report
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    What a delicious thread. More, more , more!

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  9. Naja Hannah  17 Aug 2009, 3:49am  Report
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    Is this in any way, shape or form either interesting, shocking and newsworthy? Whoopee, a gay college student had gay college sex.

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    1. Well think about the struggling closeted gay young man at uni today who reads about how acceptable a gay affair may have been in the 1920s and then sees *even* famous Mr. Waugh was a happy participant. If you are gay, or wonder if you are, well then it is normal to figure it out one way or “another”.

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