Оберон Во: Жизнь и карьера английского журналиста и писателя

English journalist and novelist (1939–2001)

Auberon Alexander Waugh '/ɔː//b//ər//ə//n// /'/w//ɔː/ (17 November 1939 – 16 January 2001) was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron". After a traditional classical education at Downside School, he was commissioned in the army during National Service, where he was badly injured in a shooting accident. He went on to study for a year at Oxford University. At twenty, he launched his journalism career at the Telegraph Group, and also wrote for many other publications including Private Eye, in which he presented a profile that was half Tory grandee and half cheeky rebel. As a young man, Waugh wrote five well received novels, but gave up fiction for fear of unfavourable comparisons with his father. He and his wife Lady Teresa had four children and lived at Combe Florey House in Somerset.

Waugh was born at Pixton Park, near Dulverton in Somerset, his mother's ancestral home. He was the eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh, grandson of the author and publisher Arthur Waugh and nephew of Alec Waugh. His mother was Laura Herbert, his father's second wife, a daughter of Colonel Aubrey Herbert (1880–1923) of Pixton, diplomat and traveller, a younger son of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, of Highclere Castle in Hampshire, a leading member of the Conservative Party, by his second wife Elizabeth Howard, a great niece of Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk, and a sister of Esme Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Penrith, ambassador to the United States. Laura's half uncle was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, the famous Egyptologist who sponsored Howard Carter who discovered King Tutankhamen's tomb, and her mother was Hon. Mary Gertrude Vesey, only child and sole heiress of John Vesey, 4th Viscount de Vesci (1844–1903). He was named after Auberon Herbert (1922–1974), his mother's brother, a landowner and advocate of Eastern European causes after World War II, himself named after Auberon Herbert (1838–1906), a son of the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon. His nickname used by friends and family was "Bron".

Born just as World War II broke out, Waugh hardly saw his father until he was five. and passed his Greek and Latin A level exams at the early age of fifteen. He went on to begin a philosophy, politics, and economics degree at Christ Church, Oxford, where he held an exhibition in English. He was rusticated by the academic authorities, and never returned to the university, preferring to make an early start in journalism.

During his National Service, he was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards and served in Cyprus, where he was almost killed in a machine gun accident. Annoyed by a fault in the machine gun on his armoured car which he drove frequently, he seized the end of the barrel and shook it, accidentally triggering the mechanism so that the gun fired several bullets through his chest. While recuperating from the accident in Italy, he began his first novel, The Foxglove Saga. Waugh polled only 79 votes, but Thorpe lost his seat. Waugh left Private Eye in 1986 when Ian Hislop succeeded Richard Ingrams as editor.

Waugh tended to be identified with a defiantly anti progressive, small c conservatism, opposed to "do gooders" and social progressives. After his death the left wing journalist Polly Toynbee in The Guardian attacked him for these views. He has been called a nostalgist and a romantic, with a strong tendency towards snobbery, although his anarchistic streak ensured that he retained the admiration of a number of people whom he would have considered "progressive" or "leftish", including Francis Wheen, who vociferously disagreed with Toynbee's obituary comments. Waugh expressed an intense dislike of poet Ezra Pound. In a Spectator column of 20 March 1976, he wrote: "Ezra Pound, as I remember, wrote some disgusting lines about storm clouds over Westminster in his Cantos. I haven't looked at them for twenty one years and certainly don't intend to look them up again now. Ever since I was fifteen when I first read Pound's boring filth, the thought of storm clouds over Westminster has filled me with nausea and gloom." In a letter dated 15 January 1973, writer Guy Davenport reported, "Auberon Waugh in the English press giggled over Ez's demise [1 November 1972], informing his audience that Pound's silly verse was so much twaddle, and his example the cause of Modern Poetry and all its vulgar pretense. He also confesses that he immensely enjoyed torturing Pound in the madhouse with letters asking what passages in The Cantos might mean. Pound's replies, tedious and lengthy, he destroyed after having his laugh." Waugh broadly supported Margaret Thatcher in her first years as prime minister, but by 1983 he became disillusioned by the government's economic policy, which he felt used the destructive economics and cultural ideas of the New Right. When Thatcher became a strong public opponent of his friend and Sunday Telegraph editor Peregrine Worsthorne, Waugh became a staunch opponent of Thatcher. Her closeness to The Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil, whom Waugh despised, further confirmed his view. To a traditional Tory, these were some of the most deplorable aspects of the Thatcher years. There was a certain amount of public posturing in his popular anti Americanism; he visited the US whenever he could, and spent notable time holidaying in New England and on US speaking tours. He had a house in France and, despite his conservatism, was a fervent supporter of European integration and the single currency, which he saw as a means of de Americanising the UK. He said that his ideal government would be a "junta of Belgian ticket inspectors". Neither did he conform to reactionary stereotypes in his strong opposition to the death penalty, or in his antipathy towards the police force in general (especially when they sought to prevent drink driving; Waugh believed strongly that this was not as serious a problem as it is widely believed to be, and referred to the anti drink driving campaign as the "police terror"). He opposed anti tobacco smoking legislation and in his later years he was highly critical of Labour attempts to ban fox hunting. In 1995 he was against attempts by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard to introduce a national identity card, a policy which at the time was opposed by the Labour Party. Along with Patrick Marnham and Richard West, Waugh was one of three signatories to a letter to The Times that called for a British monument to honour those repatriated as a result of the Yalta Conference; it was eventually erected in 1986. Waugh held that while the dangers of smoking (especially passive smoking) and drinking were exaggerated, the dangers of hamburger eating were seriously under reported; he frequently referred to "hamburger gases" as a serious form of atmospheric pollution and even made references to the dangers of "passive hamburger eating". He also claimed that computer games "produce all the symptoms and most known causes of cancer". The Tobacco Advisory Council of the UK organised a pro smoking book to be ghosted for either Bernard Levin or Auberon Waugh. Neither columnist agreed to put their name to it, but Waugh wrote a foreword endorsing the book and hitting out at the anti smoking lobby: "Let us hope this book strikes a blow against the new control terrorists", he said. He also posed for photos with a cigarette in his hand.

In 1961, Auberon Waugh married Lady Teresa Onslow, daughter of the 6th Earl of Onslow.

Waugh died of heart disease at the age of 61, perhaps owing to the effects of his chest wound. He is buried in the graveyard of the Church of St Peter & St Paul, Combe Florey. Press obituaries were lengthy, and the headline "Auberon Waugh dies" was printed on the placards for the day's London Evening Standard.