A Little Learning (23)

'Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography'. Waugh begins his story with heredity, writing of the energetic, literary and sometimes eccentric men and women who, unknown to themselves, contributed to his genius. Save for a few pale shadows, his childhood was warm, bright and serene. The Hampstead and Lancing schooldays which followed were sometimes agreeable, but often not. His life at Oxford - which he evokes in Brideshead Revisited - was essentially a catalogue of friendship. His cool recollection of those hedonistic days is a portrait of the generation of Harold Acton, Cyril Connolly and Anthony Powell. That exclusive world he recalls with elegant wit and precision. He closes with his experiences as a master at a preparatory school in North Wales which inspired Decline and Fall.

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies, Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively and published a number of travel books. In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards. He went on to write a number of other books, including Brideshead Revisited (1945) and Men at Arms (1952). Evelyn Waugh died in 1966.