Opera critic dies, 60
RIPI am greatly saddened to learn that Alexander Waugh has died, far too soon, of prostate cancer.
Among his many writings, he was opera critic of the Mail on Sunday and the Evening Standard in the 1990s and the author of Classical Music: A New Way of Listening. He went on to write a brilliant study of the Wittgenstein family and a very brave biography of God.
Grandson of Evelyn Waugh and son of Bron, Alex was funny, good company, unpompous and erudite in surprising ways. He married Eliza, daughter of his father’s best friend Alexander Chancellor, and maintained the family estates down in Somerset. Later, he got involved in fruitless controversies over Shakespeare’s authorship and the Brexit hysteria (he was briefly a Farage candidate).
He will be widely missed.
Telegraph obit here.
Another taken by prostate cancer, recently Jeremy Clarke, Low Life of The Spectator. Please get your PSA done don’t wait for symptoms, if cancer detected early before secondaries occur the outcome is favourable. Excellent Telegraph obit. I shall reread his Fathers and Sons.
Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Men, get your PSA test, not to mention annual physical. I’ve had too many friends who succumbed to prostrate cancer unnecessarily.
Oh crap, there goes one of the remaining few who knew what he wrote about. RIP.
Thanks so much, Norman Lebrecht, for your judicious summary of Alexander’s many gifts. He was a family friend. We loved him dearly and we will miss him terribly.
His Wittgenstein book was truly memorable, one of the books I have wanted to keep on my shelf for all the years it’s been out.
Awful. Why do the good ones always have to leave us so early?
“Later, he got involved in fruitless controversies over Shakespeare’s authorship”
Fruitless only if you wish to remain ignorant on the Shakespeare authorship question.