Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh is probably the nearest thing to a great British writer of the 20^th century.  However because of his strongly Conservative views, he has not been all that popular except when his novel Brideshead Revisited was televised in the 1980s and was admired as a well done costume drama and the sort of period piece that often appeals to viewers abroad.  He was also an old fashioned and traditional Roman Catholic..

Like his narrator of Brideshead, (Charles Ryder) Evelyn was not born into the aristocracy, but to an upper middle class family who lived in Hampstead... in 1904.   He was a clever child and did well at school, but in 1917, his older brother Alec had written a novel about boarding school life... portraying homosexual relationships... and because of this, the Waugh family sent Evelyn to Lancing College, rather than Sherborne, which Alec had attended.  He settled down at Lancing and developed artistic interests, and made friends.   He was mildly rebellious; taking no interest in conventional pursuits, such as the officers training corps.  He won a scholarship to Oxford, and when he went there in 1922, he enjoyed the freedom of University life.  Like Charles Ryder, he enjoyed drinking, and had a group of friends who were interested in the artistic life...

He was also involved in some homosexual relationships, and gradually did less and less academic work, and lost his scholarship.   Like Charles he did not take his degree.. Again like Charles he decided to study art, and enrolled in an art school in London.  However (unlike Charles who went on to art school in Paris) Evelyn  grew bored with the study, and dropped out - He ended up taking a teaching job... as he needed the money.   He disliked teaching and went on writing a novel he had started... but found that it seemed unlikely to get published.  Upset, he burned the manuscript and having lost a teaching job, made a halfhearted attempt at suicide.  In spite of his aggressive persona, he was always more sensitive and prone to nervous tension than he appeared on the surface…