 | |
| Author | Evelyn Waugh |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Sword of Honour |
| Genre | War, satire |
| Publisher | Chapman & Hall |
Publication date | 1961 |
| Pages | 184 |
| Preceded by | Officers and Gentlemen |
Unconditional Surrender is a 1961 novel by the British novelist Evelyn Waugh. The novel has also been published under the title The End of the Battle. Along with the other two novels in the series, it was adapted into a 2001 TV film with Daniel Craig.
Unconditional Surrender is the third novel in Waugh's Sword of Honour series, the author's examination of the Second World War. The novels loosely parallel Waugh's wartime experiences.
The title is a reference to the Allied demand for an Unconditional Surrender of the Axis, made in the same period in which the plot is set, but which gets an ironical meaning when applied to the protagonist's tangled personal life.
Guy Crouchback spends 1941–1943 in Britain, mostly at desk jobs. He turns 40 and, with the German invasion of Russia and Britain's subsequent alliance with the Soviet Union, 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 abortion care provider. Eventually she decides to look for a husband instead. Crouchback is chosen for parachute training prior to being sent into action one last time. The commanding officer at the training center is Ludovic. In the previous volume, Officers and Gentlemen , Ludovic had deserted from his unit in Crete, and in the process murdered two men, one while escaping from the island by boat. Crouchback was also on board, and although he was delirious and barely aware of his surroundings, Ludovic fears exposure if the two meet. Already a misfit as an officer, Ludovic becomes increasingly paranoid and isolated.
Guy is injured during the parachute training, and finds himself stuck in an RAF medical unit, cut off from anyone he knows. He eventually contacts Jumbo Trotter to extract him and returns to live with his Uncle Peregrine. His father having died, and having left him a significant estate, Guy is now able to support himself comfortably. This attracts the attention of Virginia who begins to visit him.
Before Guy goes abroad, he and Virginia are reconciled and remarry (or, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, resume their marriage). 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 his Catholicism, Guy is posted to Yugoslavia where he is appalled by the Partisans, befriends a small group of Jews and finds out that his former friend de Souza's loyalties are with Communism rather than with England. While Guy is overseas, a German doodlebug hits Uncle Peregrine's flat and kills him and Virginia, but spares Virginia and Trimmer's son, Gervase, who is in the country with Guy's sister.
On his late father's advice, Guy attempts individual acts of salvation, but these ultimately make matters worse for the recipients. The Yugoslavian Jews receive gifts from Jewish organisations in the USA, infuriating the locals, although the gifts consist largely of warm clothes and food. After leaving Yugoslavia, Guy is told that some of his friends there have been executed as spies, largely because of their friendship with him.
After the end of the war Guy meets the daughter of another old Roman Catholic family and marries her. In Waugh's first version of the novel's conclusion, Guy and his second wife produce further children who are ironically to be disinherited by Trimmer's son. Waugh altered this ending to an uncompromisingly childless marriage in the revised text, after realising that some readers interpreted such a conclusion as hopeful. "No nippers for Guy," he clarified in a letter to Nancy Mitford. Nonetheless, Waugh died in 1966 and, in the 1974 Penguin reprint, the character has two sons with his wife Domenica Plessington.
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
Alexander Raban Waugh was a British novelist, the elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh, uncle of Auberon Waugh and son of Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic, and publisher. His first wife was Barbara Jacobs, his second wife was Joan Chirnside and his third wife was Virginia Sorenson, author of the Newbery Medal–winning Miracles on Maple Hill.
The Heart of the Matter (1948) is a novel by English author Graham Greene. The book details a life-changing moral crisis for Henry Scobie. Greene, a former British intelligence officer in Freetown, British Sierra Leone, drew on his experience there. Although Freetown is not mentioned in the novel, Greene confirms the location in his 1980 memoir, Ways of Escape.
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles Ryder, most especially his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle. Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes: Sebastian and Julia. The novel explores themes including nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy and Catholicism. A faithful and well-received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11-part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981.
Vile Bodies is the second novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1930. It satirises the bright young things, the rich young people partying in London after World War I, and the press which fed on their doings. The original title Bright Young Things, which Waugh changed because he thought the phrase had become too clichéd, was used in Stephen Fry's 2003 film adaptation. The eventual title appears in a comment made by the novel's narrator in reference to the characters' party-driven lifestyle: "All that succession and repetition of massed humanity... Those vile bodies...". The book was dedicated to B. G. and D. G., Waugh's friends Bryan Guinness and his wife Diana.
An unconditional surrender is a surrender in which no guarantees are given to the surrendering party. It is often demanded with the threat of complete destruction, extermination or annihilation.
Auberon Alexander Waugh was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron".
Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE was an English actor and singer. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he began his career on stage. Throughout his career, he appeared in productions in both the West End of London and on Broadway in New York City. He came to wider attention from 1967 in the title role of the British television spy drama Callan, earning him the 1970 British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.
Brigadier Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, 4th Baron Lovat, was a prominent British Commando during the Second World War and the 25th Chief of the Clan Fraser of Lovat. Known familiarly as Shimi Lovat, an anglicised version of his name in the Scottish Gaelic language. His clan referred to him as MacShimidh, his Gaelic patronym, meaning Son of Simon. Simon is the favoured family name for the Chiefs of Clan Fraser. While the 15th Lord de jure, he was the 17th Lord Lovat de facto, but for the attainder of his Jacobite ancestor who was executed in 1747. He was also 4th Baron Lovat in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
The Sword of Honour is a trilogy of novels by Evelyn Waugh which loosely parallel Waugh's experiences during the Second World War. Published by Chapman & Hall from 1952 to 1961, the novels are: Men at Arms (1952); Officers and Gentlemen (1955); and Unconditional Surrender (1961), marketed as The End of the Battle in the United States and Canada.
Helena, published in 1950, is the sole historical novel of Evelyn Waugh.
The Battle of Poljana was a battle of World War II in Yugoslavia. It started outside of Poljana, near the village of Prevalje in Yugoslavia, and was the culmination of a series of engagements between the Yugoslav Army and a large retreating Axis column, numbering in excess of 30,000 men. The column consisted of units of the German (Wehrmacht), the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia, the Montenegrin People's Army, and Slovene Home Guard forces, as well as other fascist collaborationist factions and even civilians who were attempting to escape into British-controlled Austria. It took place after Nazi Germany officially surrendered on May 8.
Auberon Mark Yvo Henry Molyneux Herbert (1922–1974) was a British landowner and advocate of Eastern European causes after World War II.
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in July 1957. It is Waugh's penultimate full-length work of fiction, which the author called his "mad book"—a largely autobiographical account of a period of hallucinations caused by bromide intoxication that he experienced in the early months of 1954, recounted through his protagonist Gilbert Pinfold.
Men at Arms is a 1952 novel by the British novelist Evelyn Waugh.
Christopher Hugh Sykes was an English writer. Born into the northern English landowning Sykes family of Sledmere, he was the second son of the diplomat Sir Mark Sykes (1879–1919), and his wife, Edith. His sister was Angela Sykes, the sculptor. His politician uncle, also Christopher Sykes, was, for a time, a close friend of Edward VII.
Officers and Gentlemen is a 1955 novel by the British novelist Evelyn Waugh.
The Loved One is a 1965 black-and-white comedy film about the funeral business in Los Angeles, which is based on The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948), a short satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh. It was directed by British filmmaker Tony Richardson and the screenplay—which also drew on Jessica Mitford's book The American Way of Death (1963)—was written by noted American satirical novelist Terry Southern and British author Christopher Isherwood.
The Sword of Stalingrad is a bejewelled ceremonial longsword specially forged and inscribed by command of King George VI of the United Kingdom as a token of homage from the British people to the Soviet defenders of the city during the Battle of Stalingrad. On 29 November 1943, it was presented to Marshal Joseph Stalin by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at a ceremony during the Tehran Conference, in the presence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and an honour guard.
Mrs. Algernon Stitch, more familiarly known as Julia Stitch, is a character created by Evelyn Waugh, best known for her role in the novel Scoop. The character was inspired by Waugh's friendship with the well-connected socialite, Lady Diana Cooper.