Sword of Honor

Under the Flanks of the Megaloaurus of War

What can you say about a book that was written by such a master of the snide remark that he can place his lead character’s Army desk under the loins of a model dinosaur? “The compartment assigned to the Special Service Forces Liaison Office — Guy's — was larger than most but there was little floor space for he shared it with the plaster reconstruction of a megalosaurus, under whose huge flanks his trestle table was invisible from the door.” Sword of Honor is to WWII what MASH was to Korea, pointing out the ludicrous amidst the heroic does not deter such high quality entertainment from also being lasting and meaningful. Waugh’s work is so often scathingly funny—so many characters in the books simply miss the irony of situations, that his work becomes comic and sad, uplifting and depressing all at the same time. Sword of Honor is Evelyn Waugh’s last big book, (actually three books later edited together into one) and as such, is as close to masterful as a writer can get. However, Sword of Honor is vastly different from the book many readers will know this Waugh for—Brideshead Revisited. Sword of Honor could be viewed as the follow-up to Brideshead; both novels are obviously based upon Waugh’s own life, (his belief that Roman Catholicism provides a worthwhile philosophical system) and while Charles Ryder and Guy Crouchback are not the same character, the action in Sword picks up pretty much were Brideshead left off, but Sword continues to the end of WWII. Sword deals far more with the incongruous results of naïve, Catholic and nearly Italian, Guy’s reactions to the world problems thrust upon him by the war. Brideshead, on the other hand, dealt more with the more personal and internal struggles of Charles and the Flyte family as they try to live in a world in which they are slightly alien. Both books examine the absurd relationship of the practicing Roman Catholic in England mid-century to the affairs of the world. Guy struggles to maintain his own ethics, his own bel...