Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh (Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh, 1903–1966) was a novelist, known particularly for Bridesdhead Revisited.

He was born in West Hampstead. His older brother Alec Waugh had attended Sherborne school, and Evelyn was originally intended to go there as well, but in 1915 Alec was asked to leave because of a gay relationship, in 1917 published a novel The Loom of Youth including references to homosexual friendships at school. The resulting scandal meant that Evelyn could not go to Sherborne, so he was sent instead to Lancing College and then to Hertford College, Oxford.

He worked briefly as a schoolmaster, and then as a full-time writer and journalist. He served in the Royal Marines and then in the Royal Horse Guards during the Second World War.

In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardner, daughter of Lord and Lady Burghclere. The couple were known as "He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn", but they were divorced the next year. In 1930 he became a Roman Catholic (having been drawn to high Anglicanism as a boy but later rejected religion).

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