‘The Jackal’ snaps up Waugh estate

The fallout from the feuding at the London literary agency Peters Fraser & Dunlop (PFD) has reached its apogee: after 80 years controlling the rights to the novels of Evelyn Waugh, PFD has lost the literary estate to one of the world's most powerful literary agents, the American Andrew Wylie (pictured).

The author of Brideshead Revisited, Vile Bodies and Scoop, Waugh was always a jewel in PDF's crown. The loss of the estate follows the departure of several well-known agents, including Pat Kavanagh and Caroline Dawnay, and authors Ruth Rendell and Andrew Motion among others.

It is not the first time Wylie - known in publishing circles as 'The Jackal'
- has stolen a PFD star: more than a decade ago he famously persuaded Martin Amis to leave PFD by negotiating a more generous advance for his 1995 novel The Information.

The timing is perfect for Wylie: with a new Hollywood film version of Brideshead Revisited, starring Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon, due to be released later this year, there is bound to be renewed interest in Waugh in the United States, where his work is less well known than in Britain.

Wylie made his move after the Waugh family had discussed whether they could continue to leave the estate in the hands of PFD, which had represented the author since he wrote Decline and Fall in the late 1920s. Alexander Waugh, the novelist's grandson, told the Times: "PFD had lost a lot of living writers. It seemed possible it [the agency] might not succeed, so we shopped around."

At a family conference, Wylie's name emerged. "We all thought it might be quite nice to have a jackal baring his teeth and snarling ferociously," said Alexander. Within hours of discussing it by phone with Wylie, the agent was on a plane from New York to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to woo Teresa D'Arms, Waugh's oldest surviving child.

There has been no response so far from Caroline Michel, the publisher parachuted in as chief executive of PFD last September after a proposed management buyout of the agency by its key agents failed.