Men At Arms by Evelyn Waugh

This is another book from my 2011 Reading List and unfortunately I didn’t realise until recently that it’s actually the first book of a trilogy. So now I have to track down Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender. They all come under the title Sword of Honour and there was a film of that name made too.

I really enjoyed this one. Yes, it’s wartime yet again and a lot of this book is so like the stories which I’ve been hearing from members of my family for years. As they were all involved in the war this seems really authentic.

Guy Crouchback is a not so young Englishman who has been living in Italy and at the outbreak of World War II he is desperately trying to get into the army to ‘do his bit’, but because of his age he isn’t having any luck. Eventually he gets into the Halberdiers, a regiment which seems to sign-up people who could be described as ‘odd bods
Most of the book is set in various training camps in different parts of Britain but the Halberdiers do eventually set sail for a bit of action.

There’s quite a lot of humour in it which I expect of Evelyn Waugh and he doesn’t seem to be able to leave his Roman Catholicism out of books. Guy Crouchback had married a flighty young woman who has fluttered from man to man in the nine years since their divorce. As they were childless it means the end of the line for the Crouchback family tree as re-marriage is out of the question for Guy. A chat with Ambrose Goodall who is a Roman Catholic convert with a penchant for the English Catholic ‘aristocracy’, (another familiar theme which crops up in Waugh) gives Guy the idea that it might still be possible to keep his bloodline going.

I’m looking forward to reading the other two books now.

2 thoughts on “Men At Arms by Evelyn Waugh

  1. I haven’t read this one but I did love both Scoop and Decline and Fall — not as much of the Catholic element, just great satire. Maybe they are earlier works before he converted. I do hope to read more Waugh after I get the TBR shelf under control — I saw a pristine copy of his complete short stories at the used-book store, I hope it’s still there when I go back after the end of my book-buying ban.

    • Karen K,
      I haven’t read Decline and Fall yet but it’s sitting staring into my back from a bookcase so I’m planning on reading it soon. I loved Scoop. Religious converts are always so obsessed by it I think. I seem to remember that Graham Greene is a bit like that too. I gave up on my book-buying ban but I don’t think I’ve bought any for over two weeks. I’m going to Edinburgh on Saturday so I’m sure to find some there! I hope you get the short stories, I haven’t read any of his.

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