(1903–66)
an English writer of novels which are greatly admired for their elegant style and humour. In novels such as Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), he made fun of the upper class and upper middle class in England in the 1920s and 1930s. His travels in Africa provided the ideas for novels such as Black Mischief (1932) and Scoop (1938). In 1930 he became a Roman Catholic and his interest in Catholic beliefs is shown in the more serious novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), about an upper-class English Roman Catholic family. Waugh’s other books include a series of three with the title Sword of Honour (1952–61), based on his experiences as a soldier in World War II . He had a reputation as a rude, bad-tempered man with fixed, rather right-wing views.