The Temple at Thatch is an unpublished novel by the British author
Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began
writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at
Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in
the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented
unfavourably on the novel in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In
a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments, he
then made a half-hearted suicide bid before returning to his senses. In
the absence of a manuscript or printed text, the only information as to
the novel's subject comes from Waugh's diary entries and later
reminiscences. The story was evidently semi-autobiographical, based
around Waugh's Oxford experiences. The protagonist was an undergraduate
and the work's main themes were madness and black magic. Some of the
novel's ideas were incorporated into Waugh's first commercially
published work of fiction, the 1925 short story "The Balance", which
includes several references to a country house called "Thatch" and,
like the novel, is partly structured as a film script. Acton's severe
judgement did not deter Waugh from his intention to be a writer, but it
affected his belief that he could succeed as a novelist. For a time he
turned his attention away from fiction, but with the gradual recovery
of his self-confidence he was able to complete his first novel, Decline
and Fall, which was published with great success in 1928.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_at_Thatch>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1547:
Nine-year-old Edward VI became the first Protestant ruler of England,
during whose reign Protestantism was established for the first time in
the country with reforms that included the abolition of clerical
celibacy and the mass.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VI_of_England>
1887:
The largest-ever snowflakes, measuring 15 in (38 cm) and 8 in (20 cm)
thick, were observed in Fort Keough, Montana, US.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records%23Snow>
1896:
Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, England, was the first person ever
convicted of exceeding the speed limit. He was travelling 8 miles per
hour (13 km/h) when the limit was 2 mph (3.2 km/h), and he was fined
one shilling.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/speed_limit>
1933:
Choudhary Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet entitled "Now or Never" in
which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in northeast India
that he termed "Pakstan".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choudhary_Rahmat_Ali>
1964:
An unarmed USAF T-39 Sabreliner on a training mission was shot down
over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19, killing all three
aboard.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-39_Aircraft_Incident>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
putsch (n):
A coup; an illegal effort to forcibly overthrow the current government
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/putsch>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of
love and the law of hate.
--José Martí
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%AD>
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