To the casual visitor Santa Marta is a sub-tropical paradise, a small sister of Jamaica, Bermuda and Nassau, unmentioned in the colour-splashed brochures of travel agents: an island where the sun shines throughout the year on the sandy beaches of innumerable coves, on the cane-fields and coconut plantations, on the shingled hits of the peasant villages and the fine houses of the white planters handed down through generation after generation, from the Sugar Barons of a past century. But this was not how the newspaper columnist, Bradshaw, saw it when he arrived on his first trip to the Caribbean. Bradshaw found Santa Marta a smouldering volcano. This novel is a brilliantly successful evocation of the atmosphere and the problems of life on a West Indian island. It is a dramatic story, packed with incident and thrilling in this mounting tension. It weaves into the fortunes of a small group of islanders the ambitions and jealousies, the hopes and fears, the complexes and inhibitions of a people to whom the tint of the skin is more important than wealth, or power, or skill, whose tangled history has bequeathed a heritage of passion in an island where the blood never cools. Alec Waugh, 1898-1981, was a British novelist born in London and educated at Sherborne Public School, Dorset. Waugh's first novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), is a semi-autobiographical account of public school life that caused some controversy at the time and led to his expulsion. Waugh was the only boy ever to be expelled from The Old Shirburnian Society. Despite setting this record, Waugh went on to become the successful author of over 50 works, and lived in many exotic places throughout his life which later became the settings for some of his texts. He was also a noted wine connoisseur and campaigned to make the cocktail party a regular feature of 1920s social life.

Island in the sun: A novel

Literature & Fiction

Waugh, Alec

Literary

Cassell

If you enjoyed the powerful atmosphere of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby you may just have an inkling of the smoothly professional efficacy of Alec Waugh's The Fatal Gift. His novel breathes the values and attitudes of the early decades of the 20th century. Raymond Peronne has wealth, is bright, is devastatingly attractive to women: his fatal gift. Second son of a baronet, Perronne goes to Oxford (from which he is rusticated), then to New York (in the '20s and '30s) and is in Egypt during the war (moving in circles then, as in this novel, inhabited by such as Evelyn Waugh, Claud Cockburn and Robin Maugham). In tense anticipation we watch Peronne, for whom good fortune seems always imminent, fall at every point-until he finds the isle of Dominica and begins a love affair the like of which he has never known. Alec Waugh (1898-1981) was a British novelist born in London and educated at Sherborne Public School, Dorset. Waugh's first novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), is a semi-autobiographical account of public-school life that caused some controversy at the time and led to his expulsion. Waugh was the only boy ever to be expelled from The Old Shirburnian Society. Despite setting this record, Waugh went on to become the successful author of over 50 works, and lived in many exotic places throughout his life which later became the settings for some of his texts. He was also a noted wine connoisseur and campaigned to make the cocktail party a regular feature of 1920s social life.

The Fatal Gift : A novel

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Loom of Youth

Classics

Methuen Publishing, Ltd.

Alec Waugh describes his novel as an erotic comedy. It is the story of a respectable Treasury official, Victor Trail, and his wife Myra, whose marriage has lost its flavour, owing to Victor's clock-work schedule and Myra's bland acceptance of it. The unexpected revelation that Victor has suspiciously altered his routine rouses Myra out of her complacency, and her jealousy rapidly changes the shape of their lives. It leads her into a series of quite extraordinary adventures and demimonde activities which are altogether astonishing in a respectable married woman.Her discomfiture is made all the more excruciating by her new-found intimacy with Victor, who apparently knows nothing about her illegal actions and amazing amatory diversions-or does he?The reader of this novel of sex and international intrigue is in for a number of surprises. The only unsurprising thing about it is that it is a marvellous piece of entertainment by a past master of the art.

A SPY IN THE FAMILY An Erotic Comedy

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Bangkok: The Story of a City

A fluent and affectionate portrait not only of the city of Bangkok, known to the Thais as `the city of angels', but also of the dynasty and culture that created it. Cutting through confusion and veiled mystery, Waugh unravels the plots, coups, wars, assassinations, invasions, and counter-coups of two hundred years of history as if they were this evening's gossip. This description of the genius, fascination, and enduring vitality of Bangkok is told with Waugh's customary delight in life and sensual appreciation.

Bangkok: the story of a city

W.H.Allen

The fatal gift: A novel

A Year to Remember: A Reminiscence of 1931

A year to remember: A reminiscence of 1931

First published in 1975, this story tells of how a chance meeting in a  café, a piece of grit delicately removed by a gentleman from a lady's  eye give birth to an affair... a brief yet unrelenting emotional  tug-of-war between two people whose spontaneous desire clashes head-on  with the 'facts' of their existence.There is Anna, married to Graham and happily content with her home life and two children. There is Alec, trapped in a loveless marriage to cool, uninvolved Melanie, looking to his work as a doctor for fulfillment. Between them a flame is kindled that splendidly ignites a passion way beyond the well-constructed limits of their imaginations. Then comes the test. Can they transform their dream into a lasting love or must it founder on the hard rocks of reality? Brief Encounter is also a major film starring Sophia Loren and Richard Burton

Brief encounter: A novel

Alec Waugh set this novel in Tangier where he had been an intermittent resident for 20 years. Married to a Spy is not, however, ‘another Tangier novel'. It is a dramatic story of fast-moving action and suspense based on the assumption that the Basque liberationists decide to launch a series of guerrilla attacks against southern Spain, using Morocco as their base. The British secret service sends to Tangier, to keep an eye on things, an Englishman in his middle 30s who is married to an American 10 years younger than himself. He is bringing into danger not only himself but her, and one of his main problems is that, without jeopardising security, he cannot take her fully into his confidence. Thereby he is endangering his marriage. The situation provides the framework for a story at once romantic and exciting. Alec Waugh, during World War II, was employed in Baghdad in military counterespionage. This experience gives to Married to a Spy the ring of authenticity.

Married to a spy

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

The best wine last: An autobiography through the years, 1932-1969

Allen

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