The Picturesque Prison

"This is a remarkable book, with such a good title. Jeffrey Heath is talking about the need for refuge. The false refuge in Brideshead Revisted is the great house of Brideshead with all its glamour and beauty, but the real refuge is the Catholic church, which Ryder comes to by the end of the book. Jeffrey Heath examines Waugh’s career as a writer, and his ambition, but also his need for structure and refuge. His emphasis is on Brideshead in particular, and I would recommend this as one of the best introductions to the novel that I have come across. It was the lethal combination of drugs and alchohol that brought about the breakdown. When I say drugs, I don’t mean morphine and cocaine but the strong sleeping pills that he took. He wrote about the frightful breakdown that he had in his novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold . I remember talking to the priest who had dealt with him at the time, and taken him to a Catholic psychiatrist. He said that it was 80% physical. Waugh would start drinking from 10 in the morning – whisky, brandy and wine. I do. The thing about Waugh that is so captivating, though, is that his terrific wit and humour always keeps bursting out. Even Pinfold is very funny, although also black. Waugh can be savagely funny, and he can be just savage. He was a bully, but like all bullies, if you stood up to him he would immediately back down. He suffered, like Graham Greene, from fear of boredom. If he met somebody for the first time, to amuse himself he would start ribbing and bullying them, in the hope that they would give it back. If they did, he would be delighted, and would become charm itself. Very much so. He was tormented by feelings of inadequacy on all kinds of levels. Except as an artist, where he knew what he was doing."