“... spirit.’ Coward was unusual among Maugham’s celebrity friends in not finding him intimidating. Evelyn Waugh didn’t either, but even he was made to feel uncomfortable after calling someone ‘a pansy with a stammer’ in Maugham’s presence. On another occasion, Maugham ‘gave him an icy stare’ as Ann Fleming – wife of Ian – chastised him ...”

“... fractious lesbian networks of New York, London and Paris’: from Eva to Allanah to Esther to Evelyn and then Eda, with many side projects and much criss-crossing, as Allanah darts off with Eda and then Jane, around the same time Esther is dallying with Joan, who is Eda’s ex. It’s a shame, perhaps, that Hastings’s attention is not especially attuned ...”

“... Park, their main comment is that ‘the developer’s name, Candy and Candy, is redolent of an Evelyn Waugh novel.’ It all seems to irritate them immensely, as well it might: the classical city they imagined is being abandoned in favour of one defined by congestion, chaos and demonstrative, distorted skylines. The lack of planning is glaring, but ...”

“... in fiction, more so than readers consciously notice. Christopher Sykes once asked his good friend Evelyn Waugh how it was that one of his earlier novels, apparently light and humorous, had an undertow of melancholy. Waugh said he had done it by keeping the weather in the book grey and rainy.) One of my favourites is My ...”

“... Eye’s. And it is not quite true to say that the DNB has muzzled the young buffers. Auberon Waugh’s piece on his uncle Alec has at least one genuinely comic paragraph: ‘After this success, in the opinion of his brother Evelyn, Alec Waugh never drew another sober breath, but this ...”

“... and translator of the Bible, a writer of detective stories and the subject of a biography by Evelyn Waugh. Penelope’s father was in religion a sceptic and by vocation a wit. When asked if he had plans to write a memoir, he responded: ‘Must We Have Lives?’ As a child, Penelope, aka Mops or Mopsa, far outshone her older brother, Rawle. Her ...”

“... was ‘excessively sprightly’ and in need of American rigour. She didn’t like having to pay Evelyn Waugh 20 guineas an article either (the going rate was 12). Vogue swung like a pendulum with the moral moment: one issue covered Wallis Simpson’s dresses (by Molyneux and Mainbocher) and aperçus – the former Mrs Spencer serves seeded white grapes ...”

“... His time there, which included many subplots and escapades, needs a comic novelist such as Evelyn Waugh, J.G. Farrell or indeed the Mario Vargas Llosa of The Time of the Hero or Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter rather than this ponderous stylist. In Germany Casement hoped to meet Irish prisoners of war filled with the same spirit of romantic ...”

“... in Casey’s account only by spiritualism, Mormonism and those American burial practices mocked by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One: all forms of kitsch, amusingly disdained by Casey. And illogically disdained too: why is the tombstone of an enthusiastic American bowler, who died at the age of 31, and which is marked with the motto ‘scoring in ...”

“... merits of his work? What about it? Do you think he didn’t know? Reviewing a biography of Evelyn Waugh in 1975, Amis reflected that he was glad he had never met the author of work that he so much admired, not least because he would probably have been on the receiving end of a savagely rude put-down. ‘It was his nature to go too far, most of all ...”

“... 1949 (The Chronicle of a Friendship), describing a meeting between the Stravinskys and the Evelyn Waughs, he had dolefully observed that if Waugh ‘does not brook the literary talk of literary types, he certainly seems to enjoy it from outsiders like (though no one is quite like) the I.S.’s and even from ...”

“... be fresh, affectionate and grateful. It is sometimes difficult to achieve novelty, especially when Evelyn Waugh’s Diary has left a minefield of disobliging references to be explained away. A visit to the Paris Embassy in 1946 found Waugh much put out by having his bugbear Quennell staying there as an unexpected fellow ...”

“... came from his salary as an MP. Even his tastes in fiction, where his favourite modern authors were Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, suggested the claret-loving socialite rather than the mining-bred socialist. During his second spell at the Home Office in 1974-76 he oversaw important legislation promoting gender and racial equality, and introduced a much ...”

“... as does simple perversity; and they may affect to love the most overlooked of their progeny. Thus Evelyn Waugh used to claim that his favourite novel was Helena. Though Salammbô was a greater financial and social success than Madame Bovary – it became a meme, and the inspiration for ballgowns – most knew that Flaubert’s first novel was his ...”

“... if I’m not joggled,’ he may be saying to some anxious lady. There is a suggestion of the later Evelyn Waugh. Still, though the method can produce boss shots, the sturdy indifference to received opinion, the basic earnestness and the eye open to the whole scene, allow her to come out with important judgments. Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, as it now ...”