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Classic Serial: Evelyn Waugh - Sword of Honour

Tim McInnerny

Paul Ready

Adrian Scarborough

Tim Pigott-Smith

Robert Daws

Lee Ingleby

Oliver Chris

Priyanga Burford

Harry Jardine

Sean Murray

Michael Bertenshaw

Joanna Brookes

Arthur Hughes

Georgie Fuller

Joel MacCormack

Ben Crowe

John Norton

Sally Avens

Jeremy Front

Evelyn Waugh

Classic Serial: Evelyn Waugh - Sword of Honour: Episode 1: Men at Arms

Men at Arms

Episode 1

Episode 1: Men at Arms

Evelyn Waugh - Sword of Honour

BBC Radio 4 - Classic Serial, Evelyn Waugh - Sword of Honour, Men at Arms

Guy Crouchback is searching for a purpose to live. Evelyn Waugh's satirical masterpiece.

4 Extra Debut. Guy Crouchback is searching for a purpose to live. Evelyn Waugh's satirical masterpiece, on the futility of war, stars Paul Ready.

by Evelyn Waugh
Dramatised by Jeremy Front

Evelyn Waugh's satirical WW2 masterpiece:
Guy Crouchback is a man scarred by a broken marriage, searching for a purpose in a modern world, when war breaks out he feels he may have at last found a cause worth fighting for.

Directed by Sally Avens


Waugh's trilogy of WWII 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 them 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. Like Brideshead, Waugh drew heavily upon his own experiences during WWII. 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. His adventures are peopled by colourful characters: the eccentric, Apthorpe, one-eyed, Ritchie-Hook, promiscuous, Virginia Troy. At the centre of the novel is Guy for whom we never lose our sympathy as he emerges from his adventures bowed but not broken. From Dakar to Egypt, the Isle of Mugg to the evacuation of Crete, tragedy is leavened by Waugh's acerbic and farcical comedy.

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Evelyn Waugh's satire on the futility of war and one man's quest for spiritual fulfilment

Evelyn Waugh's WWII satirical masterpiece on the futility of war and one man's quest for spiritual fulfilment. Dramatised by Jeremy Front

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