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Evelyn Waugh was an English writer.

He was born in London and was the second son of the well-known editor, publisher, and essayist Arthur Waugh. He was brought up in upper-middle-class surroundings in the affluent London district of Hampstead, where he attended Heath Mount School. His elder brother Alec also became a writer. Like his father, he was educated at the privileged private school Sherborne, but Alec was asked to leave before completing his studies when he published the controversial novel The Loom of Youth, which dealt with homosexual relations between students and was considered damaging to Sherborne’s reputation. As a result, the school refused to admit Evelyn, and his father sent him to Lancing College, a private boys’ school, a less prestigious institution with a strict reputation, affiliated with the High Church, one of the branches of the Anglican Church. This circumstance tormented Evelyn for the rest of his life and may have influenced his interest in religion, although he lost his childhood faith and became an agnostic.

After graduating from Lancing, he entered Oxford, where he studied history. There Waugh neglected academic work and was better known for his artistic and literary pursuits. He took part in social life together with aesthete youths. His social life at Oxford later provided the background for some of his most characteristic works. He probably had homosexual relationships during his student years, but this has not been definitively proven.

His final examination results qualified Waugh as a third-class specialist. He had no opportunity to remain for the additional term he needed, and he left Oxford in 1924 without a degree. In 1925 he taught at a private school in Wales. In his autobiography, Waugh states that he attempted to commit suicide at this time by swimming out to sea, but turned back after being stung by a jellyfish. He was later dismissed from another teaching post for attempting to seduce the housekeeper. He told his father that he had been dismissed for drunkenness.

Soon Waugh was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker and later took an interest in marquetry. He also worked as a journalist before the publication in 1928 of his first novel, Decline and Fall. Other novels that followed about English “wild young men” were well received by both critics and the public.

In 1928 Evelyn Waugh