Auberon Waugh

Auberon Alexander Waugh (November 17, 1939–January 16, 2001) was a British author and journalist.

Waugh's views

Waugh broadly supported Margaret Thatcher in her first years as prime minister, but by 1983 he became disillusioned by the Government's economic policy, which he felt used the destructive economics and cultural ideas of the New Right. When Thatcher became a strong public opponent of his friend and Sunday Telegraph editor Peregrine Worsthorne, Waugh became a confirmed opponent. Her closeness to Andrew Neil, editor of The Sunday Times, whom Waugh despised, further confirmed his view. Waugh tended to be identified with a defiantly anti-progressive, small-c conservatism, opposed to "do-gooders" and social progressives. Three days after his death, Polly Toynbee in The Guardian vociferously attacked him for such views.

Related Topics:
Margaret Thatcher - 1983 - New Right - Peregrine Worsthorne - Andrew Neil - The Sunday Times - Polly Toynbee - The Guardian

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Waugh criticised what he saw as the cultural proletarianisation of the British middle classes, the general Americanisation of Britain and the sale of the wealth of the English shires to American businessmen, which to a traditional Tory were some of the most deplorable aspects of the Thatcher years. He had a house in France and was a fervent supporter of European integration and the single currency, which he saw as a means of de-Americanising the UK. Other ways in which he did not conform to reactionary stereotypes was in his strong opposition to the death penalty, and in his antipathy towards the police force in general. He opposed anti-smoking legislation and in his later years he was highly critical of Labour attempts to ban fox hunting. Waugh has been called a nostalgist and a romantic, with a strong tendency to snobbery, although his anarchistic streak ensured that he retained the admiration of a surprising number of people whom he would have considered horribly "progressive" or "leftish".

Related Topics:
France - Death penalty - Smoking - Fox hunting

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Auberon Waugh married, in 1961, Lady Teresa Onslow, daughter of the 6th Earl of Onslow. The couple—with their two sons and two daughters—eventually moved to his father's old house, Combe Florey, Somerset.

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