Decline and Fall

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2013

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Bradshaw, John Bowen and Ann Pasternak Slater join Melvyn Bragg to discuss Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall. Set partly in a substandard boys' public school, the novel is a vivid, often riotous portrait of 1920s Britain. Its themes, including modernity, religion and fashionable society, came to dominate Waugh's later fiction, but its savage wit and economy of style were entirely new. Published when Waugh was 24, the book was immediately celebrated for its vicious satire and biting humour.

With:

David Bradshaw Professor of English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford

John Bowen Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of York

Ann Pasternak Slater Senior Research Fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You don't need us to tell you there's a general election coming.
0:04.6	So what does it mean for you?
0:06.4	Every day on newscast we dissect the big talking points,
0:10.1	the ones that you want to know more about.
0:12.3	With our book of contacts, we talk directly to the people you want to hear from.
0:16.8	And with help from some of the best BBC journalists,
0:19.4	we'll untangle the stories that matter to you.
0:23.0	Join me, Laura Kunsberg, Adam Fleming, Chris Mason and Patty O'Connell for our daily
0:28.3	podcast.
0:29.3	Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:35.0	For more details about in our time and for our terms of use please go to BBC.co.
0:40.0	UK slash radio4.
0:42.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:44.0	Hello, in May 1928, the Times Literary Supplement published a long review of a new book about
0:49.4	Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The reviewer wasn't terribly impressed by the work of the poet's
0:54.6	24-year-old biographer who was referred to throughout the article as Miss Evelyn
0:59.2	War. It's a mistake that would never be made again. Within a few months, Evelyn War was a household name,
1:05.0	the latest sensation of literary London.
1:07.0	The book that made him famous was not the Rosetta biography,
1:10.0	but a comic novel published shortly afterwards.
1:12.0	Its title was
1:12.8	Decline and Fall. It was immediately hailed by reviewers including Arnold Bennett
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.