Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh

This is actually a trilogy: Men At Arms, Officers and Gentleman and Unconditional Surrender. So it is long and detailed and there’s plenty of time for plot and character complexity. It’s the story of Guy Crouchback, an upper class Englishman whose wife has divorced him and who is seeking to do his bit to justify his rank and privilege. The book is a detailed description of his wartime exploits between 1939 and 1945 with a 1951 epilogue. Deemed too old for active service, Guy joins up through the intervention of a friend of the family. He gets into the Halberdiers, a traditional regiment who recruit from the gentry by and large, and he goes on to do training in various parts of the country. He gets involved with a rogue brigadier, ends up moving to the Commandos, who are a group of special forces, eventually is posted to Egypt and then Crete, which is a disaster but from which he escapes in a fishing boat. Over the course of the war he doesn’t actually fire a single shot but wanders through a series of leadership and administrative jobs in an environment that is nothing short of chaotic. The story corresponds closely with Waugh’s own wartime experience, which I found horrifying because, as I said to Theo, it’s like an upper class British version of Catch-22. The characters are either hopelessly stitched up upper class Brits who are bound by pointless traditions and are utterly incapable of making a logical decision, or opportunists who are making their way in the world at war in any way they can whether it’s through spying, cheating, deserting or betraying their comrades. The conduct of the war is farcical, at times humorously so and at others, shockingly so. All of this is told in Waugh’s understated arch, satirical tone and with the character of Guy as a gently observant, somewhat gormless but rather likeable human counterpoint. My bookseller, Ian Moir, says he goes back to this book every few years and I will too if my book pile ever reduces to a manageable level. 4 ½ stars