Unconditional Surrender

by Evelyn Waugh
Dramatised by Jeremy Front
Evelyn Waugh's satirical WW2 masterpiece:
Guy's military career is revived when he is
selected for a mission to Italy. He travels to
London to await orders.

Directed by Tracey Neale

Evelyn Waugh's trilogy of WW2 novels mark a high point in his literary career. Originally published as three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender they were extensively revised by Waugh, and published as the one-volume Sword of Honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished them to be read. They are dramatised for the Classic Serial in seven episodes.

This is a story that continues to delight as we follow the comic and often bathetic adventures of Guy Crouchback. Witty and tragic, engaging and insightful, this work must be counted next to 'Brideshead Revisited' as Waugh's most enduring novel. Like Brideshead, Waugh drew heavily upon his own experiences during WW2. Sword of Honour effortlessly treads the line between the personal and the political - it is at once an indictment of the incompetence of the Allied war effort, and a moving study of one man's journey from isolation to self fulfilment.