Book Covers I Have Loved: Put Out More Flags, Evelyn Waugh

I think my apartment hates British literature. I bought a copy of Brideshead Revisited so I could do a cover post on it, but the book's been missing for the past month. Wait a minute- Brideshead Revisited? Could my apartment be a homophobe? Well, I never.

Anyway, this was a Penguin edition of the title, designed in the 1970s by Bentley/Farrell/Burnett. However, I didn't like it nearly as much as this cover for Put Out More Flags, so maybe misplacing the book isn't such a bad thing.


Just like Graham Greene, I ended up reading Waugh because of a cover. This one in particular, which cuts the whimsy with something sinister. I also like the barely maintained tension between the 20s-style font and the purely 70s illustration. It makes Waugh's work seem timeless in a way the actual content often is not.

This didn't end up being my favorite Waugh novel - that's totally the Loved One - but it's still my favorite cover.

Next week: I try and bring this back to regular feature-dom with a more current cover. Wish me luck.