Alexander Raban Waugh (8 July 1898 – 3 September 1981) was a British novelist, the elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh, uncle of Auberon Waugh and son of Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic and publisher. His first wife was Barbara Jacobs (1900–1996), daughter of the writer William Wymark Jacobs, his second wife was Joan Chirnside (1902–1969), and his third wife was Virginia Sorenson (1912–1991), author of the Newbery Medal-winning Miracles on Maple Hill.
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Biography
Waugh was born in London to Arthur Waugh (1866–1943) and Catherine Charlotte Raban, a great-granddaughter of Lord Cockburn (1779–1854). Another distinguished ancestor was his great-great-grandfather William Morgan FRS (1750–1833), a pioneer of actuarial science who served The Equitable Life Assurance Society for 56 years and who won the Copley Medal in 1789. Among ancestors bearing the Waugh name, the Rev. Alexander Waugh D.D. (1754–1827) was a minister in the Secession Church of Scotland who helped found the London Missionary Society and was one of the leading Nonconformist preachers of his day. His grandson Alexander Waugh (1840–1906) was a country medical practitioner, who bullied his wife and children and became known in the Waugh family as "the Brute". The elder of Alexander's two sons, born in 1866, was Alec's father, Arthur.
Alec was educated at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset. The result of his experiences was his first, semi-autobiographical novel, The Loom of Youth (July 1917), in which he dramatised his schooldays. The book was inspired by Arnold Lunn's The Harrovians, published in 1913 and discussed at some length in The Loom of Youth.
The Loom of Youth was so controversial at the time (it mentioned homosexual relationships between boys, albeit in a very understated, staid fashion) that Waugh remains the only former pupil to be dismissed from the old boys' society (The Old Shirburnian Society). It was also a best seller. (The Society's website gives a different version: Alec and his father resigned and were not reinstated until 1933; while Arthur Evelyn, his younger brother went to a different school due to the dismissal of Alec). Robert Graves wrote in a letter sent from Liverpool to his friend Siegfried Sassoon, dated 9 September 1917, "That Loom of Youth book is amazingly good: I might have written it myself – no that sounds wrong but you understand: what a reckless man to write and publish it ! He is old Gosse's nephew or something and Gosse was very shy about it till he heard that it was in its fifth edition when he changed his tune." In 1932, the book was again the subject of controversy when Wyndham Lewis's Doom of Youth seemed to suggest that Waugh's interest in schoolboys was because he was a homosexual. This was settled out of court. In the mid-1960s, Waugh donated the original manuscript, press clippings and correspondence with the publisher to the Society.