The Life Of Evelyn Waugh

In this lively and scholarly book, Douglas Patey vividly traces Evelyn Waugh's career from the comfortable middle-class home he was anxious to flee, through his escapades at Oxford, his adventures in South America and Africa, his experience of war, to his last years as veiled autobiographer and biographer. In the process, this volume explores the nature of Waugh's Catholicism and examines how his religious beliefs began to guide his novelistic practice.

Arguing that Waugh's novels, like his travel writing and even his biographies, are consistently autobiographical, Patey draws out the connections between the life and work, through a series of compelling chapters.