Auberon Waugh

Auberon Waugh in the 1980s

Auberon Alexander Waugh (17 November 1939 – 16 January 2001) was an English journalist and author who was the son of Evelyn Waugh.

Quotes

• Listening to the Gospel on Palm Sunday, it struck me that many people criticise Pontius Pilate for his role in the affair while letting the multitude go scot-free. Pilate did what little he could to dissuade them from the extremely unpleasant course of action on which they were set, but the multitude kept shouting for a crucifixion. Pilate could not have done more without provoking a riot. The crucifixion when it happened was a victory for direct democracy against the effete, liberal paternalism of Pilate.
  • Country Topics: Essays (London: Michael Joseph, 1974), "How My Speech Saved the Village", p. 96

• Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.
  • "The Power Urge", essay in The Spectator (15 December 1982); reprinted in Another Voice (1986), p. 92

• Of the two crises facing us this Christmas — the caviare crisis and the Gulf crisis — I must admit finding the caviare crisis the more immediate. Many people — including children — are actually having to do without any caviare at all this Christmas.
  • "Way of the World", column in The Daily Telegraph (24 December 1990), p. 23

• Murder does not rank as a scandal, in the way that financial impropriety or (to a lesser extent) sexual misbehaviour might. Murder is more of a misfortune, part of the American way of life. It is considered in bad taste to bring up the subject in conversation.
  • "Way of the World", column in The Daily Telegraph (28 October 1995).

• Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.
  • "Way of the World", column in The Daily Telegraph (1 November 1995).

• There is no such thing as a normal human being. Nobody looks so eccentric as the man who is trying to look normal.
  • "Way of the World", column in The Daily Telegraph (6 November 1995).

• The price of privilege is eternal vigilance.
  • Will This Do? (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), ch. 6, p. 94

• Religion was inevitably going to contract into a small nucleus of enthusiasts, and all they've achieved is to change the enthusiasts; the new enthusiasts happen to be the ones who like clapping their hands and looking soppy. They repel me.
  • Interview in Naim Attallah, Singular Encounters (1990), "Auberon Waugh"

Attributed

• It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.
  • In Richard Reeves, A Ford, Not a Lincoln (1975), ch. 1

• I don't want 'constructive criticism'. I want praise.
  • In The Times Literary Supplement (6 March 2009).

About Waugh

• He wrote to no agenda or party line. He did not believe it was the job of journalists to run the country or to advise politicians, but to nip at the heels of sacred cows and expose the inadequacy of the emperor's new clothes. He never pontificated about family values but he lived them, deeply. And however cruelly he wrote on occasions, he was unfailingly kind in real life. He believed that it was our duty to be happy as long as possible because tomorrow we die.
  • Lynn Barber "Waugh stories", The Observer (21 January 2001)
  • The original print article appeared in The Observer, rather than The Guardian; on this occasion, the online source does not distinguish between the two publications.

• With allies in the class struggle like Auberon Waugh the middle class has no need of enemies. Last night ATV transmitted the third and last programme in his series This is Waugh, in which he pleads for his right to go on living in the large and comfortable country house his father left him in Somerset, while the workers go on doing their own thing somewhere as far away as possible.
• It has been heartbreaking to see a legitimate and important cause—the survival of the middle class ethic—defended three weeks running by a procession of utterly unsympathetic nutters.
  • Max Hastings "This heartbreaking Waugh", Evening Standard (24 August 1976), p. 13