Person    | Male  Born 1903  Died 1966

Evelyn Waugh

Writer. Born 11 Hillfield Road, West Hampstead. Wrote "Decline and Fall", "Brideshead Revisited". And we have to tell you the strange but true fact that Waugh's first wife's name was also Evelyn. Their friends resorted to the terminology of "she-Evelyn" and "he-Evelyn". The Evelyns had a disastrous honeymoon during which she caught pneumonia. In 1928 they moved into a flat at 17a Canonbury Square. She then admitted to an affair and with their marriage barely 15 months old he filed for divorce.

For other examples of this affinity for similar names see Jean Rhys and Julian Huxley.

Waugh could be wickedly funny. An entry in his diary for March 1964, on hearing that doctors had removed a benign tumour from the much-disliked Randolph Churchill, has Waugh saying "A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it."

Died at home in Somerset.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Evelyn Waugh

Commemorated ati

Evelyn Waugh

English Heritage Evelyn Waugh, 1903 - 1966, writer, lived here.

Read More

Rules Restaurant 2

Rules®. London's oldest restaurant. In the year Napoleon opened his campaign ...

Read More

Other Subjects

James Hall (writer)

James Hall (writer)

Writer and journalist. James Hall started the campaign to commemorate the first recording studio after he chanced upon it while researching his novel, The Industry Of Human Happiness, set in the ea...

Person, Journalism / Publishing, Literature

1 memorial
Edgar Allan Poe Society of Prague

Edgar Allan Poe Society of Prague

Established as a non-profit organisation, it was originally set up to promote the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe and to encourage and promote old and new artistic interpretations of his works. I...

Group, Community / Clubs, Literature, Czechoslovakia

3 memorials
William Combe

William Combe

Writer. Chiefly remembered as the author of 'The Three Tours of Dr Syntax', a comic poem which satirised William Gilpin. 

Person, Literature

1 memorial
Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Poet and writer. Born Anna Letitia Aikin at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire. She had a successful career at a time when women rarely were professional writers. Her writing includes essays, poems ...

Person, Literature, Poetry

1 memorial