Evelyn Waugh was born in London, the son of a publisher. He attended Oxford University, but took little interest in academic life, leaving without a degree. After university he worked as a teacher at various private schools, which provided him with material for his first and possibly finest comic novel, Decline and Fall (1928).Following the success of his first novel, Waugh moved to London and became famous as a sardonic chronicler of the frivolous upper-class society of the inter-war years, notably in the novels Vile Bodies (1930) and A Handful of Dust (1934) and the short-story collection Mr Loveday's Little Outing and Other Sad Stories (1936). In 1930, he was converted to Roman Catholicism and this had a considerable effect on his subsequent work.
Waugh also applied his satirical gifts to colonial targets in Black Mischief (1932), and in the 1930s travelled widely, recording his experiences in a number of books such as Remote People (1931) and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936). The latter also provided material for his brilliant war correspondent novel, Scoop (1938). In 1937, he married for the second time, into an old Catholic family, after his first marriage ended.
With the coming of World War II, Waugh gained a commission in the Royal Marines, where he briefly saw service in West Africa, an episode that provided material for Men at Arms (1952), the first volume of his war trilogy Sword of Honour (1965). He was later in action in Crete, and was a member of the British military mission to Yugoslavia in 1944. Crete provided material for the second volume, Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Yugoslavia for the third, Unconditional Surrender (1961).
Waugh completed his "Roman Catholic" novel, Brideshead Revisited, during the war, which was published in 1945. A marked departure from his previous satirical style, this novel was a deeply serious examination of the workings of faith and providence in the lives of members of an ancient Catholic family. Considered by some critics to be Waugh's finest work, it was regarded by others as overwritten and snobbish. The book was made into a hugely popular television series in 1981.
In 1947, a trip to the United States inspired Waugh to write one of his funniest books, The Loved One (1948), about burial practices in California. In 1957, his autobiographical novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, brilliantly describes the onset and development of a violent psychotic episode. His Diaries published in 1976 reveal that he was no more charitable to himself than he was to others. A selection of Waugh's letters were published in 1980. He died at his home in Somerset in 1966.
