the novelist J. B. Priestley, in a long essay in the New Statesman entitled "What Was Wrong With Pinfold", offered the theory that Waugh had been driven to the verge of madness not by an unfortunate cocktail of drugs but by his inability to reconcile his role as a writer with his desire to be a country squire. He concluded: "Pinfold [Waugh] must step out of his role as the Cotswold gentleman quietly regretting the Reform Bill of 1832, and if he cannot discover an accepted role as English man of letters ... he must create one." Waugh replied mockingly, drawing attention to Priestley's large land-holdings and surmising that "what gets Mr Priestley's goat (supposing that he allows such a deleterious animal in his lush pastures) is my attempt to behave as a gentleman". Later opinions of the book, expressed by Waugh's eventual biographers, are mixed. Sykes considered the beginning to be one of the best pieces of autobiographical writing, but found the ending "weak & sentimental". Stannard, writing in 1984, did not consider the book a major work in the Waugh canon. Hastings in 1994, however, thought it "by any criteria an extraordinary work", and credited it with establishing Waugh's public image: "stout and splenetic, red-faced and reactionary". David Wykes (1999) considers that this "very controlled short novel" demonstrates that "Waugh was not very good at invention, but was unsurpassed at embroidery". Adaptations In 1960 Waugh accepted a fee of £250 from the BBC for an adaptation of Pinfold'', as a radio play, by Michael Bakewell. The broadcast, on 7 June 1960, was well received by the critics, although Waugh did not listen to it. In September 1977 a staged version of the book, written by Ronald Harwood and directed by Michael Elliott, opened at the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester. The play was brought to London, and performed at the Roundhouse Theatre in February 1979, where Michael Hordern's depiction of Pinfold was highly praised—"a man suffering from chronic indigestion of the soul". During 1962 Sykes was approached by the Russian-American composer Nicolas Nabokov, who was interested in making an opera from the Pinfold story on the basis of a libretto provided by Sykes. Waugh gave his approval to the idea, and in March 1962 met with Nabokov. Discussions continued during the following months, before the project was abandoned in the summer. Notes and references Notes Citations Sources (Originally published