Alec Waugh (Alec Alexander Raban Waugh) Biography

English novelist, born in London, educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, which provided the background for his first novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), which caused a scandal for its allusions to homosexuality in a public school. This novel and Three Score and Ten (1929), also about schoolboys, later provoked Wyndham Lewis's attack on Waugh and others in The Doom of Youth (1932), which had to be withdrawn due to libel threats. Alec Waugh was considerably more liberal-minded than his elder brother, Evelyn Waugh. His greatest critical and commercial success, Island in the Sun (1956), set in the West Indies, was made into a film starring Harry Belafonte. Later works include A Spy in the Family (1970), ‘an erotic comedy’, and The Fatal Gift (1973). Waugh's many autobiographical works include Myself when Young (1923), The Early Years of Alec Waugh (1962), and The Best Wine Last (1978).