Items from the Wish List: Humphrey Carpenter

Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends

by Humphrey Carpenter

'[The Brideshead Generation] has both style and substance, and is above all an enjoyable companion. It has a wildly amusing cast, here controlled by a skilful director.' Evening Standard 'Jovial and entertaining, full of the sort of stories that your friends will tell you if you don't read it before them.' Independent 'Carpenter has read widely and has collected an enormous fund of entertaining stories and facts.' Sunday Telegraph 'Hauntingly sad and wonderfully funny and by far the best thing Humphrey Carpenter has done.' Fiona MacCarthy, The Times. – Amazon.

Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s

by Humphrey Carpenter

In Humphrey Carpenter's own words, 'This is the story of the longest-ever literary party, which went on in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank, throughout the 1920s.' 'This book', to continue to quote Carpenter himself, 'is chiefly a collage of Left-Bank expatriate life as it was experienced by the Hemingway generation - "The Lost Generation", as Gertrude Stein named it in a famous remark to Hemingway.' There are brief portraits of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney and Sylvia Beach, who moved to Paris before the First World War and provided vital introductions for the exiles of the 1920s. The main narrative, however, concerns the years 1921 to 1928 because these saw the arrival and departure of Hemingway and most of his Paris associates. 'He is a compelling guide, catching the kind of idiosyncratic detail or incident that holds the readers' attention and maintains a cracking pace. Anyone wanting an introduction to the constellation of talent that made the Left Bank in Paris during the Twenties a second Greenwich Village would find this a useful and inspiring book.' Times Educational Supplement. – Amazon.

OUDS: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, 1885-1985

by Humphrey Carpenter

“The Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) is the principal funding body and provider of theatrical services to the many independent student productions put on by students in Oxford, England. Many famous actors have participated in OUDS productions. For example, in 1907 professional actresses Lily Brayton and her sister Agnes appeared as Katherine and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew;^[5] John Gielgud made his directing debut at OUDS in 1932 with a production of Romeo and Juliet in which he enlisted professional actresses Peggy Ashcroft to play Juliet and Edith Evans to play the Nurse.^[6] Another notable production was when Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor appeared in a production of Dr. Faustus in 1966 with undergraduates in the supporting cast.” – Wikipedia.