1961.

A jovial, unpublished letter from Evelyn Waugh to Christopher Sykes, discussing his recent stay in London to record his BBC programme 'An Act of Homage and Reparation to P.G. Wodehouse' on 20 June 1961, produced by Sykes. One side of Combe Florey House letter paper (single foolscap sheet, approx. 200 words in total), signed "E. Waugh".Waugh begins by addressing Sykes "Dear Employer", before lauding his friend with thanks for his hospitality "during my perilous days in London. The honour of Wodehouse steeled me for the ordeal but without your support I shall have quailed and fled from Wellingtonia." Wellingtonia being a reference to the BBC and Sir Lindsay Wellington, a senior mandarin there.Waugh's praise continues that Sykes's "ever open purse alone made it possible for me to survive physically. Your strong arms held me spiritually. I will tell Margaret to engage the 40 Martyrs on behalf of your soul", before mentioning time spent on the trip with Ann Fleming and Sir Hugh Greene, judging dining with the former to be the cause of his present stomach ache.The second part of the letter concerns a point of contention arisen during Waugh's stay with Sykes about "the Traiks pedigree" - a lineage which Waugh took the effort to trace back to "German Lutherans in the 18th century" who then moved to England and "married to English nobility and gentry". He closes by asking Sykes to "convey my tender regards to your pretty young wife", before signing "your humble subordinate in the great work of broadcasting, E. Waugh". Folded twice, with Sykes's pencil markings.

Waugh had long been a defender of P. G. Wodehouse against the many critics who thought his 1941 wartime broadcasts Naziphilic. At the end of 1960 Waugh had begun to make plans, prompted by Walter Taplin, to celebrate Wodehouse's 80th birthday. With this in mind he sidled up to Christopher Sykes at a luncheon that December and asked "are you still employed as an electrician at the BBC?", electrician being the occupation, Waugh supposed, of everyone employed in television and radio.
Having pitched the idea of a radio talk both celebrating Wodehouse's birthday and "refuting once and for all the odious calumny of 1941" (Sykes, Evelyn Waugh), Sykes set about getting the commission, helped in large part by the then-Director General of the BBC Sir Hugh Greene (brother of Graham).
The broadcast was recorded in June 1961, during the visit referenced in his letter. The exuberance of Waugh's thanks, though certainly in part for show, can be explained by his genuine anxiety for the trip to London and for the broadcast itself, knowing that he was not popular in the BBC at large. Writing to Sykes ahead of the trip, Waugh said "it is not clear to me that you are fully aware of the obligations you have incurred by summoning me to London", adding that if Sykes is not at Paddington as his train rolls in he will head straight back to Taunton.
Such anxieties, as this letter shows, were not borne out, and the trip as well as the broadcast were a success, both in rebuffing the "virulent denunciation of [Wodehouse] as a collaborator with the enemy" and in celebrating the author's oeuvre in the memorable passage "Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in."

PROVENANCE: From the estate of Christopher Sykes. One letter of seven housed in an envelope marked "Letters not given to Mr Amory". Mark Amory was the editor of The Letters Of Evelyn Waugh, in which this letter is not published.

Stock ID: 37453

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