Evelyn WaughEvelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was a British writer, journalist, and book reviewer. He is best known for his satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), his novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and his Second Word War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952-1961). The son of a publisher, Waugh attended Lancing College and Hertfort College and worked for a brief stint as a schoolmaster before focusing full-time on writing. When he was not enjoying the English country house society, he spent a considerable amount of time traveling, reporting from Abyssinia during the 1935 Italian invasion and serving in the British armed forces during WWII. He used his varied experiences to great and often humorous effect in his writing, blending the experiences of people he met along his travels into characters and plotlines that were greatly acclaimed during his time. As is too often the case with writers, Waugh grew detached from mainstream society and eventually his own mind, even going so far as to fictionalize his own mental breakdown in the early 1950s. He is remembered, however, as one of the greatest prose stylists of the 20th century and a good man to those who were close to him. Read More Read Less