Noël Annan places Evelyn Waugh among the deviants of mid-century England
Noël Annan, 20 June 1985
“... and then betrayed during the war, and is so reactionary a Catholic that an Irishman, Conor Cruise O’Brien, denounces him. Indeed, the whole of his oeuvre has been read as an attempt to bolster his self-confidence. His critics declare that he wanted to be sure that he really was in with the upper classes and not, like Paul Pennyfeather at the end of Decline ... ”