In Obitum Alexander Waugh

24 July 2024

· Giving words to sorrow ·

• Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
• Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

• — Macbeth, Act 4 Scene 3

Alexander Waugh —⁠husband, father, new grandfather, writer, musician, Oxfordian⁠⁠— has died of prostate cancer at the age of sixty.

As his family and friends who loved him grieve in England and elsewhere, so do Oxfordians everywhere. We have lost a brilliant comrade and a powerful advocate. Stratford-upon-Avon worries a little less for a little while.

I did not have the pleasure of knowing Alexander in analog, but our digital paths crossed from time to time, and he became a friend as well as a champion. The following miscellany of Waviana puts that fine word to use in commemoration of his life.

Waviana, plural noun, or Wavian, adjective

Objects or qualities pertaining to the writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) or members of his family. Coined by British film producer John Sutro in the 1950s, Wavian is analogous to Shavian, the word used to denote things pertaining to George Bernard Shaw.

• Alexander read music at school– not at the Oxford of his forebears, but the Universities of Manchester and Surrey. He became a producer of audio recordings, a concert agent (I’m tempted to use the word impresario), and the author of books and articles about classical music and opera. With his brother Nathaniel he wrote an award-winning musical comedy, Bon Voyage!, which they produced in London in 2000. In 2007 BBC Four aired a documentary in which Alexander explored his own and others’ love for the piano. Even in his non-musical writing he would use the word piano in its dynamic sense, meaning quietly or softly.

• His subjects ranged widely. His premises were based on thorough research, his conclusions on astute analysis and wry humour. Some of the books from his pen:

• · Time: From Microseconds to Millennia, A Search for the Right Time (1999) [US title Time: Its Origin, Its Enigma, Its History]
• · God (2002)
• · Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family (2004) – more on this one below
• · The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War (2008) – about the immensely wealthy Austrian family that included the philosopher Ludwig and his brother Paul, a one-armed concert pianist. This book may become the basis for a film.

• Alexander left footprints on his journey to Oxford (earl not university).

• · 2012: Signed the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.
• · 2013: Co-⁠⁠edited Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an Industry in Denial, by which time he was speaking at Authorship conferences. He found an allusion to me as Sweet Shak(e)-Speare in William Covell’s 1595 Polimanteia, which sent him in my direction.
• · 2014: Wrote Shakespeare in Court, a radio play calling outThe pugnacity of which will reassure any Waugh-informed reader that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and other blinkered Stratfordians.
• · 2015: Named Oxfordian of the Year by the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (US). Also given its Tom Regnier Veritas award in 2023.
• · 2016: Elected Chairman of the De Vere Society (UK). Re-elected at intervals, he served in that office until his death.
• · 20??: In-progress projects to be completed (one hopes) by others: production of his nine-episode dramatisation of my life, and publication of a comprehensive reference work of Shakespeare Allusions, co-written with Roger Stritmatter. Alexander’s gifts to us should continue for a while yet.

• Even in photos (though not this one) Alexander’s deep-set eyes shone a piercing blue. In early adulthood his head sported a full quota of hair, but the Wavian DNA that bestowed his formidable intelligence and literary facility was also responsible for the androgenetic alopecia. His later coiffure gave him a resemblance to the pointy-haired boss in the Dilbert cartoon strip, or as Elizabeth Winkler described him, an electrocuted scientist.

• Alexander’s videos are without peer in their content and presentation. His YouTube channel lists them all. A couple of the crypto-tricksy number dives may have had me reaching for the gin bottledeverespirits.co.uk (I receive not a farthing), but that’s on me. His range of topics offers something to pique the interest of anyone this side of Warwickshire. One of my favourites is one of the shortest:

• In a rare live debate between orthodoxy and dissent, Stratfordian grandee Sir Jonathan Bate and Alexander the Great Heretic took each other on in 2017, disputing the answer to Who Wrote Shakespeare? before a full house of 300. I (re)wrote some song lyricsClick on the image to open an enlargement where you can read the words, or find them in my blog post. I’m still looking for someone to record this for me. Feather boa not required. that played on this event.

• A new endeavour in 2023 was the DVS podcast series 174T, hosted by the duo of Alexander and Maudie Lowe. Episode Five, Where there’s a Will, there’s a Waugh is Alexander at his Strat-dismantling best.

• As recounted in her book Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature (2023), journalist Elizabeth Winkler interviewed Alexander at home with his wife Eliza in Somerset in 2021. To see him vividly depicted in the life he lived until so recently, read the chapter Purple Robes Distained. It’s worth every shilling just for his pegging of Alan Nelson:

“He’s the biggest dickhead who ever lived”, he spat.

• As for the DNA: Alexander wrote about the literary Waughs in Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family in 2004. In 2006 the book was made into a film for the BBC. You can view it at Vimeo (the embed permission is disabled). When you’re done reading here, click on the image below to open the film’s page in a new tab. It runs for an hour and a half. It is now an especially poignant journey through the past.

Click the image to watch the programme
in a new tab at vimeo.com.

Fathers and Sons ends with a loving letter from Alexander to his puckish son Bron, six years old at the time. In it he counsels the boy:

• • There is no point in writing unless you have something to say and are determined to say it well.
• • Beware of seriousness: it is a form of stupidity.
• • Fear boredom.
• • Never use the word ersatz.

My path and Alexander’s last crossed in May. My internet-friend Jeff, also an internet-friend of Alexander’s, wanted to send him a copy of my Ovid book as thanks for a kindness that he (AW) had done for him (Jeff). We knew that he was ill but we sent a book to his house, with a note from the both of us.

Two weeks passed with no word because Alexander wasn’t at home, he was in London undergoing radiation therapy. When he got back to Somerset he let us know how delighted he was to find the unexpected gift. “Having only read short bits [of Metamorphoses] before, I am really enjoying an end to end read through.”

The poem is 400 pages long.

Flights of angels, Alexander.

photo: Glyn Howells

VERO NIHIL VERIUS