The Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh is his look at the Second World War. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961), which loosely parallel his war time experiences. Evelyn Waugh, as photographed in 1940 by Carl Van Vechten Arthur Evelyn St. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

Plot summary

The protagonist is Guy Crouchback, heir of a declining aristocratic English Catholic family. Guy has spent his thirties at the family villa in Italy shunning the world after the failure of his marriage and has decided to return to England at the very beginning of the Second World War, in the belief that the creeping evils of modernity, gradually apparent in the Soviet Union and the Nazis, have become all too clearly displayed as a real and embodied enemy. Throughout English history, Recusancy was generally synonymous with nonconformism. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ...

He attempts to join the Army, finally succeeding with the (fictitious) Royal Corps of Halberdiers, an old but not too fashionable regiment. He trains as an officer and is posted to various centres around Britain. One of the themes is recurring "flaps" or chaos — embarking and disembarking from ships and railway carriages that go nowhere. Crouchback meets Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook, a fire eater (probably based on Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, a college friend of Waugh's father-in-law whom Waugh knew somewhat from his club) and Apthorpe, a very eccentric fellow officer; in an episode of high farce, the two have a battle of wits and military discipline over an Edwardian thunder-box (portable toilet) which Crouchback observes, amused and detached. Before being sent on active service, he attempts to seduce Virginia, secure in the knowledge that the Church still regards her as his wife; she refuses him. He and Ben Ritchie-Hook share an adventure during the Dakar Expedition in 1940. Apthorpe dies in Freetown, supposedly of a tropical disease; when it is discovered that Guy gave him a bottle of whisky when visiting him in hospital (there is an implication that Apthorpe's disease, unknown to Guy, was really alcoholic liver failure), Guy is sent home, having blotted his copybook. Thus ends the first book. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ... The Royal Corps Of Halberdiers is a fictitious British regiment from Evelyn Waughs Sword of Honour trilogy. ... Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO, (May 5, 1880 - June 5, 1963), was a British officer of Belgian and Irish descent. ... Freetown, population 1,070,200 (2004), is the largest city and capital of Sierra Leone, lying on the Freetown Peninsula on the Atlantic coast. ... Liver failure is the final stage of liver disease. ...

Crouchback eventually manages to find a place in a fledgeling commando brigade training on a Scottish island under an old friend, Tommy Blackhouse, for whom Virginia left him. Another trainee is Ivor Claire, whom Crouchback regards as the flower of English chivalry. He learns to exploit the niceties of military ways of doing things with the assistance of Colonel Jumbo Trotter, an elderly Halbardier who knows all the strings to pull. Crouchback is posted to Egypt, headquarters for the Middle East theatre of operations. This involves him in the evacuation of Crete, where he acquits himself well, though chaos and muddle prevail. At this time he meets Corporal Ludovic and they and a few others escape in a small boat, a most perilous undertaking. Ludovic murdered two men who know about his desertion; erroneously, he believes Crouchback does too so treats him as an enemy. Eventually they are rescued, delirious with thirst and exposure and taken back to Egypt, where Mrs Stitch, a character who turns up in other Waugh books, takes him under her well-connected wing and equally tries to protect Claire, who has also blotted his copybook. She sends Crouchback the long way home to England, where once more he finds himself in his club asking around for a suitable job. Thus ends the second book. For other uses, see Commando (disambiguation). ... Combatants Greece United Kingdom New Zealand Australia Germany Italy Commanders Bernard Freyberg Kurt Student Strength United Kingdom: 15,000 Greece: 11,000 Australia: 7,100 New Zealand: 6,700 Total: 40,000 (10,000 without fighting capability. ... A club is generally an association of people united by a common interest or goal, as opposed to any natural ties of kinship. ...

Crouchback spends 1941-1943 in Britain, mostly at desk jobs. He turns 40 and feels the futility of the war. American soldiers are all over London. Virginia has fallen on hard times and is reduced to selling her furs. She had been persuaded to accompany Trimmer, her former hairdresser who was set up as a war hero for media consumption. She becomes pregnant by him and searches futilely for an abortionist. Eventually she decides to look for a husband instead. Crouchback is chosen for parachute training prior to being sent into action one last time. Before he goes abroad, they are reconciled and remarry (resume their marriage, in the eyes of the Catholic Church). Virginia stays in London with his elderly bachelor uncle, Peregrine Crouchback and has her baby there. Despite being incorrectly suspected of pro-Axis sympathies because of his time in pre-war Italy and of his Catholicism, Guy is posted to Yugoslavia where he is appalled by the Partisans, befriends a small group of Jews and finds out that Ludovic's loyalties are with Communism rather than with England. While Guy is overseas, a German doodlebug hits Peregrine's flat and kills him and Virginia, sparing the child, Gervase, who is in the country with Guy's sister. After the end of the war Guy meets the daughter of another old Catholic family and marries her. They have two sons in addition to Gervase and Guy farms the last of the Crouchback lands. Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in Latin, Југославија in Cyrillic, English: Land of the South Slavs) describes four political entities that existed one at a time on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century. ... Yugoslav Partisan Flag The Yugoslav Partisans were the main resistance movement engaged in the fight against the Axis forces in the Balkans during World War II, the Yugoslav Peoples Liberation War. ... Doodlebug, a word of uncertain origin often applied as a nickname to diminutive types, may refer to: Doodlebug (rail car), a self-centered propelled railroad car Doodlebug, the large-jawed larvae of the antlion; the term is sometimes used informally to describe other insects as well, such as the woodlouse...

Themes

The novels have obvious echoes in Evelyn Waugh's wartime career; his participation in the Dakar expedition, his stint with the commandos, his time in Crete and his role in Yugoslavia. Unlike Crouchback, Waugh was not a cradle Catholic but a convert from the upper middle class — although Waugh clearly believed that the recusant experience was vital in the development of English Catholicism. (City of Dakar, divided into 19 communes darrondissement) City proper (commune) Région Dakar Département Dakar Mayor Pape Diop (PDS) (since 2002) Area 82. ... Throughout English history, Recusancy was generally synonymous with nonconformism. ...

The novel is the most thorough treatment of the theme of Waugh's writing, first fully displayed in Brideshead Revisited: a celebration of the virtues of tradition, of family and feudal loyalty, of paternalist hierarchy, of the continuity of institutions and of the heroic ideal and the calamitous disappearance of these which has led to the emptiness and futility of the modern world. Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. ...

Appreciation

It paints an ironic picture of regimental life in the British Army and is a satire on the wasteful and perverse bureaucracy of modern warfare. The point of view of Guy, whose Catholicism and Italian experience combine with his diffident personality to make him something of an outside observer in English society, enables Waugh to push the satire hard and remain in voice. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ...

Underneath the comedy, the theme emerges ever more strongly. Guy Crouchback is a quintessentially English figure with his instinctive understanding of his culture, his hesitancy, courtesy and reluctance to make a scene. The novel reveals his discovery that the romantic worship of tradition and heroism — the aristocratic values which have supported him all his life — does not work in the modern world.

This is made explicit in the episode after which the novel is named, at the beginning of the third and final book. A splendid ceremonial sword is made "at the King's command", to be presented to the Soviet Union in recognition of the sacrifices that the Soviet people have made in the war against the Nazis. Before being sent to Moscow, it is put on display to the British public in Westminster Abbey; long queues of people "suffused with gratitude to their remote allies" come to worship it. Guy Crouchback is unmoved and chooses not to visit, as he is distinctly unenthused by Stalin: "he was not tempted to join them in their piety". Instead he goes for a surfeit of luxurious food for lunch on his 40th birthday and dwells neither on the past nor the future. The Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, which is almost always referred to by its original name of Westminster Abbey, is a mainly Gothic church, on the scale of a cathedral (and indeed often mistaken for one), in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. ...

It is a resigned rather than an idealistic Guy who goes to Yugoslavia, and it is made clear that the future belongs not to idealism but to the cynical Trimmer or the empty American Padfield. We are never quite sure whether it is that Guy is powerless to resist the world's decline from a Golden Age of chivalry or whether the Golden Age was a romantic illusion. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Adaptations

There have been several adaptations of Sword of Honour: a 1974 radio version written by Barry Campbell with Hugh Dickson, Norman Rodway, Carleton Hobbs and Patrick Troughton [1]; a 1967 television version starring Edward Woodward [2] a 1986 television mini-series starring Andrew Clarke [3]; and a 2001 television adaptation starring Daniel Craig [4]. Barry R. Campbell (born June 15, 1950) is a Canadian politician and lawyer. ... Carleton Hobbs (18 June 1898 - 31 July 1978) was an English actor with many film, radio and television appearances. ... Patrick George Troughton (March 25, 1920 – March 28, 1987) was a versatile and prolific English actor best known in his role as the second incarnation of the Doctor in the long running British science-fiction television series Doctor Who, which he played from 1966 until 1969. ... Edward Albert Arthur Woodward (born June 1, 1930 Croydon, Surrey) is an English stage, film and television actor and singer. ... Andrew Clarke in Banjo Patersons The Man From Snowy River (Snowy River: The McGregor Saga) as Matt McGregor (The Man) American (video tape cover) Andrew Clarke in Banjo Patersons The Man From Snowy River (Snowy River: The McGregor Saga) as Matt McGregor (The Man) Australian (DVD cover) Andrew... Daniel Wroughton Craig [1] (born 2 March 1968 [2] in Chester, England) is a BAFTA-nominated English actor best known as the sixth actor to portray secret agent James Bond in the official film series from EON Productions. ...