Auberon Waugh Quotes (1939-2001)

“Although he was 76, I always thought of him as an unusually brilliant, angst-ridden young man who was destined to become a close friend as soon as he had resolved life's problems to the extent of settling in London and allowing those of us who loved him to burn incense at his feet.”

“Certainly one receives few impressions of any spontaneous gaiety or sweetness of nature, for which his friends remember him best, and which obviously made him such an agreeable companion. Similarly there have been few glimpses of the kindliness, or the sudden disarming gentleness, which members of his family most particularly remember.”

“Sir Peregrine had been struck by the thought that it might be a good idea to revise the mediaeval concept of outlawry, whereby known IRA members could be shot at will by the police and armed services... In Worsthorne's prescription, Mrs Thatcher would be awarding herself the much coveted 00 licence to kill, or at any rate to organise murder gangs on the South American model.”

“He wrote to no agenda or party line. He did not believe it was the job of journalists to run the country or to advise politicians, but to nip at the heels of sacred cows and expose the inadequacy of the emperor's new clothes. He never pontificated about family values but he lived them, deeply. And however cruelly he wrote on occasions, he was unfailingly kind in real life. He believed that it was our duty to be happy as long as possible because tomorrow we die.”

“With allies in the class struggle like Auberon Waugh the middle class has no need of enemies. Last night ATV transmitted the third and last programme in his series This is Waugh, in which he pleads for his right to go on living in the large and comfortable country house his father left him in Somerset, while the workers go on doing their own thing somewhere as far away as possible.”

“It has been heartbreaking to see a legitimate and important cause—the survival of the middle class ethic—defended three weeks running by a procession of utterly unsympathetic nutters.”