Evelyn Waugh

Collected for the first time in a single volume: all of the short fiction by one of the 20th century's wittiest and most trenchant observers of the human comedy.

In 1935 Italy declared war on Abyssinia and Evelyn Waugh was sent to Addis Ababa to cover the conflict. His acerbic account of the intrigue and political machinations leading up to the crisis is coupled with amusing descriptions of the often bizarre and seldom straightforward life of a war correspondent rubbing shoulders with less-than-honest officials, Arab spies, pyjama-wearing radicals and disgruntled journalists. Witty, lucid and penetrating, Evelyn Waugh captures the dilemmas and complexities of a feudal society caught up in twentieth-century politics and confrontation.

Put Out More Flags is set during the first year of the war and follows the wartime activities of characters introduced in Waugh’s earlier satirical novels Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and Black Mischief.

The dormant conflict is reflected in the activity of the novel’s main characters. Earnest would-be soldier Alistair Trumpington finds himself engaged in incomprehensible manoeuvres instead of real combat, while Waugh’s recurring ne’er-do-well Basil Seal, finds ample opportunity for amusing himself in the name of the war effort.

Between 1929 and 1935 Evelyn Waugh travelled widely and wrote four books about his experiences. In this collection he writes, with his customary wit and perception, about a cruise around the Mediterranean; a train trip from Djibouti to Abyssinia to attend Emperor Haile Selassie's coronation in 1930; his travels in Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya and the Congo, coping with unbearable heat and plagued by mosquitoes; a journey to Guyana and Brazil; and his return to Addis Ababa in 1935 to report on the war between Abyssinia and Italy. Waugh's adventures on his travels gave him the ideas for such classic novels as Scoop and Black Mischief.

Following the death of a friend, British poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. There, Dennis enters the fragile and bizarre world of Aimée, the naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr Joyboy, the master of the embalmer's art... A dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide, "The Loved One" depicts a world where love, reputation and death cost a very great deal.

'Brisk, lively and wonderfully entertaining' John Banville 'Excellent ... read this book' Literary Review 'The best single-volume life of the author available' Irish Times The much mythologised author of Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited was hailed by Graham Greene as 'the greatest novelist of my generation', yet reckoned by Hilaire Belloc to have been possessed by the devil. Evelyn Waugh's literary reputation has continued to rise since Greene's assessment in 1966. Fifty years after his death, Philip Eade draws on extensive unpublished sources to paint a fresh and compelling portrait of this endlessly fascinating man, telling the full story of his dramatic, colourful and frequently bizarre life.

Volume 1 of Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. The other two volumes are Officers and Gentlemen and The End of the Battle (UK title Unconditional Surrender). The novel is semi-autobiographical and reflects Waugh's experiences during the Second World War, while giving a satirical view of military bureaucracy. There is a strong religious element.