De Britse schrijver journalist en polemist Auberon Alexander Waugh werd geboren op 17 november 1939 in Dulverton, Somerset. Hij is bekend geworden door zijn satirische essays en om zijn conservatieve opvattingen over politiek en religie. Met zijn provocerende snobisme keerde hij zich tegen de veramerikanisering van het Verenigd Koninkrijk en in het bijzonder tegen de gevaren van de hamburger. Auberon Waugh (bijnaam “Bron”) was het tweede kind en de oudste zoon van Evelyn Waugh en zijn tweede vrouw. Hij werd opgeleid aan het Benedictijner college van Downside en aan Christ Church (Oxford), waar hij zonder diploma vertrok om zijn heil te zoeken in de journalistiek en de literatuur. Zijn eerste roman, The Foxglove Saga, verscheen in 1960, toen hij net 20 jaar was geworden. Hij begon als verslaggever van de Daily Telegraph en in de lange en vruchtbare carrière die volgde schreef hij voor The Spectator, New Statesman en andere bladen, zoals de Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, de Evening Standard en The Independent. Van 1981 tot 1990 bekleedde hij een belangrijke post in de Sunday Telegraph. Zijn vaste column in Private Eye, vanaf het begin van de jaren 1970 tot 1986, maakte van hem een beroemdheid. Van 1986 tot aan zijn dood was hij redacteur van de Literary Review en stelde hij mede de Bad Sex in Fiction Award in om elk jaar de slechtste seksscène van de hedendaagse literaire fictie te belonen.
Uit: Will This Do? An Autobiography
„On one occasion, just after the war, every child in Britain was to be allowed one banana each from the first consignment to arrive here for years.
Neither I, nor Teresa, nor my sister Margaret who was born in 1942, had ever eaten a banana but we had heard all about them as the most delicious taste in the world.
The great day arrived when my mother came home with three bananas. All three were put on my father’s plate and, before the anguished eyes of his children, he poured on cream and sugar, which was heavily rationed, and ate all three.
It would be absurd to say that I never forgave him, but he was permanently marked down in my estimation from that moment in ways which no amount of sexual transgression would have achieved.
In light of our inability to amuse him, it was thought better that we should be sent away as much as possible.
My fate was to be left in a boarding school on January 28, 1946, two months after my sixth birthday.
During my first term there, when I was still very nervous, he played one of his best practical jokes on me.
He told me he proposed to change our family name and that, when he had done so, the headmaster would summon the school together and say: “Boys, the person you have hitherto called Waugh will in future be called Stinkbottom.”
I understood perfectly well that he was joking, but one never knew how far he would be prepared to go with his jokes.
Every morning at school assembly, I felt a slight tightening of the chest as the headmaster came forward to make his daily announcements.
Teresa was also at boarding school and my father’s undisguised glee at the prospect of getting rid of his children was apparent at the end-of-holiday dinner parties which became a rigid institution.
On these occasions, Papa would dress in white tie and tails with his military medals glittering on his chest – in a gallant war seeing action in four theatres and spending months behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia, he had acquired a fair display of them.
His speech was always some variation on the theme of how delighted he was that we were going back to school.“
Auberon Waugh (17 november 1939 -16 januari 2001)
Lees verder “Auberon Waugh, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Rebecca Walker”
