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Classic Serial

Evelyn Waugh - Sword of Honour

Episode 7: Unconditional Surrender

Duration: 58 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 Extra

by Evelyn Waugh
Dramatised by Jeremy Front
Evelyn Waugh's satirical WW2 masterpiece:
After injuring his knee during a parachute jump, Guy believes his wartime experience is at an end, but then he receives orders to fly to Italy on a secret mission.

Directed by Tracey Neale

Evelyn Waugh's trilogy of novels mark a high point in his literary career. Originally published as three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender they were extensively revised by Waugh, and published as the one-volume Sword of honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished they to be read. They are dramatised for the Classic Serial in seven episodes.

This is a story that continues to delight as we follow the comic and often bathetic adventures of Guy
Crouchback. Witty and tragic, engaging and insightful, this work must be counted next to 'Brideshead Revisited' as Waugh's most enduring novel. Sword of Honour effortlessly treads the line between the personal and the political - it is at once an indictment of the incompetence of the Allied war effort, and a moving study of one man's journey from isolation to self fulfilment. Show less

Contributors

Narrator:
Tim McInnerny
Virginia:
Lydia Leonard
Peregrine:
John Rowe
Ian Kilbannock:
Oliver Chris
Ritchie-Hook:
Tim Pigott-Smith
Frank De Souza:
Joel MacCormack
Arthur Box-Bender:
Robert Daws
Madame Kanyi:
Mia Soteriou
Major Cattermole:
Arthur Hughes
Squadron Leader:
John Norton
Director:
Tracey Neale
Adaptor:
Jeremy Front

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