Book description
'We are Progress and the New Age. Nothing can stand in our way.' When
Oxford-educated Emperor Seth succeeds to the throne of the African state
of Azania, he has a tough job on his hands. His subjects are
ill-informed and unruly, and corruption, double-dealing and bloodshed
are rife. However, with the aid if Minister of Modernization Basil Seal,
Seth plans to introduce his people to the civilized ways of the west -
but will it be as simple as that? Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead
in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and
brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing
and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1928 he
published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his
first novel,
Decline and Fall
, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies
(1930), Black Mischief
(1932), A Handful of Dust
(1934) and Scoop
(1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of
Europe, the Near East, Africa and tropical America, and published a
number of travel books, including Labels
(1930), Remote People,
(1931), Ninety-Two Days
(1934) and Waugh in Abyssinia
(1936). In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later
transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in
Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags
and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited
. When the Going was Good
and The Loved One
preceded Men at Arms
, which came out in 1952, the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour'
trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes,
Officers and Gentlemen
and Unconditional Surrender
, followed in 1955 and 1961. In 1964 he published his last book, A
Little Learning
, the first volume of an autobiography. Evelyn Waugh was received into
the Roman Catholic Church in 1930 and his biography of the Elizabethan
Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in
1936. In 1959 he published the official Life of Ronald Knox. For many
years he lived with his wife and six children in the West Country. He
died in 1966.
