Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

WAUGH, ALEC• 567

that bore a resemblance to a classified Army Council document and

then was returned to civilian life in October 1945. He was later to

become the London film correspondent of theNew York Timesand

in 1953 was elected the president of the London Critics Circle. He

now lives in Chelsea. His war memoirs,Moonlight on a Lake in Bond

Street(1961), do not directly identify MI5 as the branch of intelli-

gence for which he worked, nor does the author name Petrie as his

director-general, although his description of him as ‘‘a big, heavily-

built slow-moving man’’ with ‘‘a trace of a Scots accent’’ is unmis-

takable.

WAUGH, ALEC.The elder brother of author Evelyn Waugh, Alec
Waugh joined the army straight from Sherbourne, a school he left
under something of a cloud. After graduating from Sandhurst, he was
posted to the France in July 1917 and attached to the Machine Gun
Corps. After nine months on the Western Front, Waugh’s emplace-
ment near Arras was encircled by the enemy, and in March 1918,
aged 19, he became a prisoner of war, incarcerated in a barracks
above Mainz.
Waugh had intended to remain a regular army officer after his re-
lease from Germany, but instead he chose to capitalize on the success
of his first novelThe Loom of Youth, which was published shortly
before he was sent to Flanders and caused a minor controversy be-
cause of its unusually frank treatment of homosexuality in English
public schools. His old school was particularly embarrassed by the
book and removed his name from the roll of old boys. Upon his re-
turn to London, Waugh pursued a literary career and embarked on a
disastrous marriage that was never to be consummated. He joined his
father’s publishing firm, Chapman & Hall, which includedSomerset
Maughamon its list of authors, but after eight years abandoned his
desk to travel extensively and gain a worldwide reputation as a travel
writer. His first marriage having been annulled in 1921, Waugh mar-
ried his second wife in 1932; she bore him two sons and a daughter.
After the death of his wealthy Australian father-in-law, Waugh inher-
ited a country house at Silchester but continued to spend much of
the year wandering overseas, accumulating material for more than 40
books.
At the outbreak of World War II, Waugh was a reserve officer and