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6 unusual facts about Evelyn Waugh


Hankey Bannister

In the 20th Century; Hankey Bannister became a favourite with war-time Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and British writer Evelyn Waugh.

Nicholas Hawksmoor

Algernon Stitch lived in a "superb creation by Nicholas Hawksmoor" in London in the novel Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938).

Peter Goodall

In the 1980s Goodall broadcast a series of Weekend University programs on radio station, 2SER, detailing work of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.

The Cheese Grater

Since Autumn 2005, a series of articles have appeared under the heading 'UCL plc', written under the pseudonym 'Mr Chatterbox' (a reference to Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies).

The Seven Storey Mountain

In the summer of 1948, advance proofs were sent to Evelyn Waugh, Clare Boothe Luce, Graham Greene and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.

One printing bears this accolade on the cover, from Graham Greene: "It is a rare pleasure to read an autobiography with a pattern and meaning valid for us all. The Seven Storey Mountain is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one's own." Evelyn Waugh also greatly (although not uncritically) admired the book and its author.


Barbara Ker-Seymer

She opened her London studio- above Asprey the jewellers- in 1931, and at around the same time produced for Harper's Bazaar the photographic series 'Footprints in the Sand' about up-and-coming writers; one of her sitters was Evelyn Waugh.

Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne

The couple became leaders of the London artistic and social scene and were dedicatees of Evelyn Waugh's second novel Vile Bodies.

Frances Donaldson, Baroness Donaldson of Kingsbridge

Her body of work included topics such as farming and biographies on writers Evelyn Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse.

Good Housekeeping

Famous writers who have contributed to the magazine include Somerset Maugham, Edwin Markham, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Frances Parkinson Keyes, A. J. Cronin, Virginia Woolf, and Evelyn Waugh.

Hugh Lygon

Hugh Patrick Lygon (2 November 1904 – 19 August 1936 Rothenburg, Bavaria) was the second son of William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, and is often believed to be the inspiration for Lord Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Mark Lawson

He has written several radio plays for the network, including St Graham and St Evelyn (2003) on the friendship between the Catholic novelists Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh and The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs (2005) on Mary Whitehouse's unsuccessful litigation against the National Theatre production of Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain.

Michael Gorra

His other books include The English Novel at Mid-Century (1990), an account of British fiction in the generation of Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell; it began as a doctoral thesis at Stanford University, where it won the English Department’s Alden Dissertation Prize.

Old Windsor

A chapel at Beaumont is said to be the inspiration for the chapel in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Pont Street

Pont Street is referred to in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, as a place related to typical English snobbery.

Sword of Stalingrad

Before its presentation, the sword was exhibited around the United Kingdom like a religious icon, including at Westminster Abbey, which formed a pivotal scene in Evelyn Waugh's wartime trilogy Sword of Honour.

The Trout Inn

The pub features in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited and in Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series, which was written and filmed in and around Oxford.


see also

Christopher Hollis

His last book, Oxford in the Twenties (1976) is about his wide circle of friends, including Evelyn Waugh, Maurice Bowra, Harold Acton, Leslie Hore-Belisha, and the cricketer R. C. Robertson-Glasgow.

Evelyn Waugh bibliography

Published in Evelyn Waugh: The Complete Short Stories, Ann Pasternak Slater (ed.), Everyman's Library (David Campbell Publishers Ltd), London 1998