The MagazineMad World  Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Evelyn Waugh wanted to serve his country. At 36, he was not exactly in the prime of youth, but with Winston Churchill intervening on his behalf, he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Commandos. As an officer, he initially enjoyed the easy camaraderie of the mess—though his impudence might occasionally have caused heartburn for his commander. As when he found it imperative to ask a visiting dignitary if it were really true that, in the Romanian Army, no one beneath the rank of major was permitted to wear lipstick. Waugh was physically fearless. But his participation in some of the foul-ups of the war, notably the evacuation from Crete, soured him on military life, and while recovering from a minor parachute injury at the end of 1943 he was granted leave to write what became Brideshead Revisited. Describing it as his magnum opus, Brideshead was meant by Waugh as an elegy over a way of life that was becoming extinct and supplanted by egalitarian drabness. For him, the country house was the very essence of England; and like his alter ego, Brideshead’s narrator Charles Ryder, who captures these houses in paint before they become deserted and gutted, Waugh saw it his duty to preserve their spirit in print. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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