Waugh, Evelyn (Arthur St. John)

Evelyn Waugh, photograph by Mark Gerson, 1964.

(credit: Camera Press)

(born Oct. 28, 1903, London, Eng.—died April 10, 1966, Combe Florey, near Taunton, Somerset) English novelist. After an Oxford education, he devoted himself to solitary, observant travel and the writing of novels, soon earning a wide reputation for sardonic wit and technical brilliance. His finest satirical novels are Decline and Fall (1928), Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), Scoop (1938), and The Loved One (1948). He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930, and his Catholicism is insistently reflected in his novels from then on. After service in World War II he led a retired life, growing increasingly conservative and misanthropic. His later works, more serious and ambitious but written with less élan, include Brideshead Revisited (1945) and the Sword of Honour trilogy—Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961).