Stopp’s study of Evelyn Waugh shows ... to see Gary Cooper. “World, World; Oh! World,” as Lear remarked in not wholly dissimilar circumstances. The side of Waugh which is most admirable ...

Set in 1939/40, the exploits of louche, upper-crust waster Basil Seal who manoeuvres his way around the outbreak of the Second World War, as well as the women in his life.

Evelyn Waugh’s first trip to America ... option long before the Benedict option became chic, Waugh proclaimed the modern world increasingly uninhabitable, calling us back to the age of Boniface ...