Narrating Difficult Histories: Interwar Border Crossing in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies (1930) and Christopher Isherwood’s Down There on a Visit (1962)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The interwar border crossings in Vile Bodies (1930) and Down There on a Visit (1962) reveal difficult and often lost histories of violations of freedom of expression and persecutions of sexual minorities. Drawing on archival material, including literary manuscripts and historical British Government records, to shed new light on the two novels, this essay demonstrates how border controls in Europe attracted urgent attention in the shadow of war and how customs, at the forefront of national security, were consequently relied upon as an ever crucial institution responsible for protecting the nation states and their citizens from “undesirable aliens”. Waugh and Isherwood criticised the injustice and violence of the border control policies and practices that failed to balance the self-interest of the nation states and humanitarian concerns. Narrating the difficult histories of the shadow of the shadow and experimenting with comedy and satire to narrate violence, both writers themselves crossed borders.