Evelyn Waugh (1902-1966)
Great writer. Appalling man. Brideshead Revisted, A Handful of Dust, Decline and Fall and the Sword of Honour triology are among the best English novels of the last century.
Like many minor public school men, Waugh's schooling endowed him with a sense of grievance. While his elder brother, Alec, spent several happy years at upmarket Sherborne, he rounded off his school career by penning the classic public school buggery novel, The Loom of Youth. This daring act outraged the school authorities, and there was nothing for it but to pack young Evelyn off to Lancing College instead.
Waugh's sense of having always to settle for second best made him all the more determined to be a success. While Alec was to do little more of interest than import the cocktail hour to England, Evelyn learnt to draw and letter, taught at a truly appalling public school in Wales, married a woman with the same Christian name as himself, attempted suicide, converted to Catholicism and got divorced.
His first popular success, Decline and Fall, became the classic novel about crap public schools, giving him a licence to spend much of the inter-war period wandering the world sneering at everyone he encountered.
A memorable stint in Abyssinia as a Daily Mail correspondent produced Scoop, the best book ever written about Fleet Street, and helped launch Bill Deedes on his journey to becoming national treasure.
Waugh remarried in the mid 1930s and devoted the rest of his life to religious enthusiasm, snobbery, heavy drinking, outright unpleasantness and a stint in the British Army during World War II.
His son, Auberon, had the finest anecdote about the man. At the end of the War, all children in country were issued with one banana. Evelyn snaffled the family's entire ration, added sugar and cream and, with his doubtless loving family around him, proceeded to eat the lot.
Like Elvis, he died in the toilet. In Waugh's case, he fell over while drunk and smashed his head against the bowl. It was the sort of unpleasant end he delighted in inflicting on the characters in his novels.
Back to Heroes & Scoundrels | Next >>
