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Evelyn Waugh was a London-born English writer known for his work as a novelist, biographer, travel writer, journalist, and book reviewer. He is best remembered for his satirical novel "Decline and Fall" (1928), the autobiographical "A Handful of Dust" (1934), the nostalgic family saga "Brideshead Revisited" (1945), and the war trilogy "Sword of Honour" (1952-1961). After converting to Roman Catholicism in the early 1930s, his later works often featured Catholic characters.
Born in 1903 in West Hampstead, London, Waugh was the son of Arthur Waugh (1866-1943), a professional writer and literary critic. His paternal lineage included the nonconformist preacher Alexander Waugh (1754-1827), a co-founder of the London Missionary Society. His ancestry was a mix of English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and French Huguenot origins.
Waugh was homeschooled by his mother until age seven, then attended Heath Mount preparatory school as a day pupil starting in September 1910. He began writing short stories as a hobby and was known as a school bully, with Cecil Beaton among his victims. Outside school, he wrote plays and organized performances with neighborhood friends.
During World War I's early years, Waugh and some Heath Mount schoolmates served as messengers for the War Office. In his final year there, he edited the school magazine "The Cynic." He hoped to attend Sherborne School like his father, but after his older brother Alec was expelled for homosexuality, Sherborne refused to consider him. In 1917, Waugh enrolled at Lancing College, which he viewed as inferior to Sherborne.
At Lancing, Waugh published his first work, an essay on Cubism in an art magazine. His teachers J. F. Roxburgh and Francis Crease encouraged his writing and artistic talents. He won several awards in art and literature before leaving Lancing in December 1921 upon earning a scholarship to study Modern History at Hertford College, Oxford.
At Oxford, Waugh reported for the student publications "Cherwell" and "Isis," also reviewing films for "Isis." He joined the "Hypocrites' Club" (1921-1925), a student group known for heavy drinking and homosexuality, where he had his first homosexual relationships. He divided his time among writing, improving his graphic art skills, and socializing, often neglecting his studies and clashing with his history tutor C. R. M. F. Cruttwell. Their mutual animosity lasted for decades, with Waugh mocking Cruttwell in his works.
Waugh left Oxford in 1924 without a degree. He began writing a novel and enrolled at Heatherley School of Fine Art but soon quit out of boredom and sought employment. In January 1925, he taught at Arnold House, a boys' prep school in North Wales, but struggled with the social isolation.
He resigned in summer 1925 after being promised a secretarial position by writer C. K. Scott Moncrieff, who later reneged. Around the same time, a completed novel was rejected by a publisher, leading Waugh to a failed suicide attempt. He spent the next years teaching in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire, and Notting Hill, London.
Waugh began publishing fiction commercially in 1926. In 1927, he secured a contract for a full-length biography of painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, published to critical acclaim in April 1928. His first novel, "Decline and Fall," appeared in September 1928 to praise and solid sales, reaching a third printing by December and selling American rights. Despite literary success, his personal life was unstable; he had a brief, failed marriage to socialite Evelyn Gardner (1903-1994), daughter of Herbert Gardner, 1st Baron Burghclere. Gardner ended the marriage due to his infidelities, and Waugh filed for divorce after less than a year.
Following their 1929 separation, Waugh lacked a permanent home for eight years, relying on friends' hospitality despite steady work as a writer and journalist. His 1930 novel "Vile Bodies," a sharp satire of the Bohemian aristocratic "Bright Young Things" of the 1920s, was commercially successful.
In 1930, Waugh traveled to Abyssinia as a journalist to cover Emperor Haile Selassie's coronation, then toured British East African colonies and the Belgian Congo, documenting his journeys in travel books and autobiographical novels. He spent the winter of 1932-1933 traveling through British Guiana and Brazil and joined a 1934 Arctic expedition to Spitsbergen. In 1935, he returned to Ethiopia as a war correspondent during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1937).
In April 1937, Waugh married Laura Herbert, a cousin of his first wife. They received Piers Court, a country house in Gloucestershire, as a wedding gift. He continued publishing books in the late 1930s that reflected his increasingly conservative views. In September 1939, Waugh moved his wife and children to Pixton Park in Somerset, considered safer during wartime. He was commissioned into the Royal Marines in December 1939.
Waugh's first combat action in World War II was the Battle of Dakar in September 1940. In November, he joined a commando unit and assisted in the May 1941 evacuation of Crete. Transferred to the Royal Horse Guards in May 1942, he began parachute training in 1943 but fractured his fibula during exercises, taking three months’ unpaid leave. During recovery, he began writing "Brideshead Revisited." He resumed duty in June 1944 as a liaison to Yugoslav Partisan forces and returned to London in March 1945.
Published in May 1945, "Brideshead Revisited" became his most popular work. Waugh was discharged from the army in September 1945 and traveled Europe as a journalist. His frustrations with postwar travel appeared in the novella "Scott-King's Modern Europe" (1947). In the early 1950s, he focused on war novels and completed the dystopian "Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future" (1953), expressing disdain for the postwar world. By age 50, he suffered partial deafness, rheumatism, insomnia, depression, and self-medicated with alcohol.
In 1954, doctors urged Waugh to travel for health reasons. While sailing to Sri Lanka, he exhibited paranoia and hallucinations, later diagnosed as bromide poisoning from his medications. Changing his treatment eliminated the hallucinations, an experience he recounted in the autobiographical novel "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold" (1957).
After an aggressive journalist's visit in 1955, Waugh felt unsafe at Piers Court and sold the property. In 1956, he relocated with his family to Combe Florey House in Somerset. He ceased publishing new works in the late 1950s while working on a biography of a Catholic theologian. Facing financial difficulties, he agreed to a BBC interview in 1960, his first in years.
Waugh’s final major publication was the war novel "Unconditional Surrender" in 1961. He began his autobiography in 1962; its first volume, "A Little Learning," was released in 1964, with altered names to avoid scandal but attracted little attention. Financial need in 1965 led him to sign contracts for several nonfiction books, but declining health limited him to editing a combined edition of his war novels.
Evelyn Waugh died of heart failure in April 1966 during Easter Mass with family. He was 62. He was buried at the Church of St Peter & St Paul in Combe Florey, and a Requiem Mass was held at Westminster Cathedral. His novels have since inspired numerous adaptations and remain popular into the 21st century.
