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Having seen this interview a number of times, I grow to like Waugh more and more.

The booze took its toll.

Delightful and far from rude ...

Waugh is courteous and obliging throughout

What a disingenuous smear job by BBC at the start of the of this video. Also the questions were bland and the interviewer was far from engaging.

The normally professional Freeman let himself down here. His questioning of Waugh was the problem. If you're going to try to upstage someone who was probably the greatest satirist of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the finest writers of his (and others!) generation, you better be on your game. Freeman most certainly wasn't on his game!

There are clear reasons that one is still a well regarded writer, of enduring popularity and great in terest even now...and the other is, sorry, who? Which is not to say that great interviewers dont exist, Dick Cavett and David Frost come to mind. The questions seem...badly researched and read off a list, rather than occurring in a well conducted conversation. Waugh wins.

The HIDEOUS POSH OXBRIDGE BBC BIGOTS!🤢🤮🤮🤮🤢🤮

I thought Evelyn Waugh a model of restraint. This interviewer, and his interviewing technique was ghastly, and as some other person here has stated, it was more of an interrogation!

What utter rubbish. Waugh was a perfect gentleman.

What a great novelist he was.

He seemed very relaxed, nothing like the way he was said to be at the beginning of the video. Perhaps the interviewers recollection was faulty?

He was enormously wise and probably distracted when engaged in routine interactions or professional obligations. He had a lot of abstractions to express to achieve his art. That might be a duty of genius.

I'd long assumed that Waugh was a dreadful rude snobbish pain in the arse - but he comes out of this interview very much better than I expected.

Religion is the opium of the masses .... and the cocain of the elites.

For a professional interviewer, freeman has a truly awful technique.. he asks many, many short closed questions which invite terse answers.

What blows my mind is the contrast between the way the interviewer describes Waugh decades later and the Waugh we actually see in the interview. And it's all the more accentuated by the interviewer's syrupy retrospective assurances that there is no one he ever interviewed that he respected more than Waugh. The truth I suspect being that there is no one he ever tried harder to trip up more than Waugh and who failed as utterly, because Waugh was utterly and completely comfortable in his own skin.

i feel like he is like a russian novelist like Dovstoeisky, very dense and almost incomprehensible

No. I think a no nonsense woke true interview.

Interview? It tends towards cross-examination in places.

so yal will murder me I'm prepared . . . . without really deeply knowing his works, Waugh seems like a motionless a**hole.. and Freeman kinda confused but handling it well.. and indeed it seems forced and stiff. But that's just my first inpression I swear and I'm ready to delve deeper into Waugh

If you read and know Waugh from his books, his autobiography, from biographies and too his diaries, his persona here should not have come as too great a surprise. ‘Not comfortable in his own skin’ it is probably fair to say. To be fair, he may have also seen and considered some of the pen drawings at the start of this and thought WTF (flying) F??

He treats the scum journalist (actually most journalists are scum) with charm and condescension combined. Notice the hint of a smile of amusement at some of the qustions.

This type of "interview" is much more like an interrogation than a conversation. Few if any open-ended questions. . .

How can a man of such honesty and intelligence become a Catholic?

I share the bafflement expressed below that this was an ill-natured interview. I think the interviewer has some detectable hostility towards Waugh, but he does not allow this to interfere with his conduct of the interview. I'm also puzzled by the suggestion above that "Waugh was being questioned by Charles Wilmot, Jack Davies and Stephen Black." All the questions are clearly asked by the same person. I wonder if that comment refers to some other interview.

A brilliant writer. A pleasure to read his works.

A VERY INFORMATIVE INTERVIEW AND WAUGH SO MUCH NICER THAN WE WERE MISLED

If anything it's a disappointingly binary and linear interview. The interviewer fails to elaborate on Waugh's avuncular answers.

One of the most odious, ridiculous snobs of the 20th century. An anal hole of a man.

wow. she is awful. The English have a unique way of speaking and insulting that they can deny.

Jeesh...she's such a whore, youre told. When they, the tellers, simply hate genius and beauty. This interviewer is a protagonist.

My father gave me more than I needed but I spent twice as much 😂

I'm a different class from Waugh, completely different politics, and an atheist - but I'd have loved to have been able to spend an hour talking to him as he is a fascinating character and a great writer.

Coming from a long line of Northern working class machine operators wherever did the thinking man crumpet acquire such an accent . The kind of phoniness Waugh raged against. I clicked on this to hear Waugh , not to hear one of the architects who did so much to make Britain what it is today.

a hard left feminist intro and a cuck progressive interviewer. BBC at its finest. Defund now.

Mr Masmanian is quite correct. I am not remotely surprised that Waugh was prickly and defensive given the clumsy, functional interpersonal style of the interviewer. Waugh was a difficult man but one who, like nearly all human beings, responded better to warm, open questioning than the cold checklist approach of the unskilled Freeman.

Amiable belligerence. I don't think you see that too often.

How open was Waugh with academics and journalists?

What a wholly unnecessary, patronising and incorrect introduction to this interview for all us plebs.

He seems relatively pleasant to me, but faced with silly questions

The interviewer was an obnoxious jerk. Waugh was much kinder to him than most of us would be in his position, I suspect.

22:49 "well everyone thinks ill of the BBC" 😂

Can’t agree with Joan here. Waugh seems pretty patient and genial rather than ‘irritable and obstructive’. A clever man, always a page or two ahead and perhaps bored with those a page or two behind. He seems happy to suffer fools gladly here.

27:38 to 27:44 is so obviously directed at the interviewer. It was priceless, not least because the dumb schmuck Freeman didn't register the fact at all!

Waugh was fine. Freeman comes across as nervous bordering on the obnoxious, frankly. More an interrogation than an interview.

An interview style I'd describe rather quickfire and inquisitorial. Asking yes, no, questions. No wonder there may have been some discomfort.

As someone who read all of Waugh's books at an age when one did (from c.16). and biographies such as the one by Christopher Sykes, and had heard all the anecdotes about his legendary rudeness, I was expecting something really unpleasant: it turned out to be a perfectly courteous exchange, if somewhat unsatisfactory in that more could have been said about Waugh's work other than the very early works and Pinfold. No mention of Brideshead or the Sword of Honour trilogy or his travel writings, which had hilarious episodes demonstrating his incisive powers of observation.

A lovely man, and a terribly wasted opportunity to get to know him so much better.

As with many unrepentant beastly old Tory squires he's quite amusing and engaging in conversation. Like a figure out of Fielding.