A Spy in the Family: An Erotic Comedy

Alec Waugh describes his novel as an erotic comedy. It is the story of a respectable Treasury official, Victor Trail, and his wife Myra, whose marriage has lost its flavour, owing to Victor’s clock-work schedule and Myra’s bland acceptance of it. The unexpected revelation that Victor has suspiciously altered his routine rouses Myra out of her complacency, and her jealousy rapidly changes the shape of their lives. It leads her into a series of quite extraordinary adventures and demimonde activities which are altogether astonishing in a respectable married woman.

Her discomfiture is made all the more excruciating by her new-found intimacy with Victor, who apparently knows nothing about her illegal actions and amazing amatory diversions-or does he?

The reader of this novel of sex and international intrigue is in for a number of surprises. The only unsurprising thing about it is that it is a marvellous piece of entertainment by a past master of the art.

Alec Waugh, 1898-1981, was a British novelist born in London and educated at Sherborne Public School, Dorset. Waugh’s first novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), is a semi-autobiographical account of public school life that caused some controversy at the time and led to his expulsion. Waugh was the only boy ever to be expelled from The Old Shirburnian Society.

Despite setting this record, Waugh went on to become the successful author of over 50 works, and lived in many exotic places throughout his life which later became the settings for some of his texts. He was also a noted wine connoisseur and campaigned to make the ’cocktail party’ a regular feature of 1920s social life.