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

George Borrow

George Borrow

Writer and traveller. Born George Henry Borrow, East Dereham, Norfolk. He travelled widely throughout Europe and Morocco and was also a great linguist. He caused a minor scandal, when, in a transla...

Person, Literature

1 memorial
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Dramatist and author. Born Dublin as Samuel Barclay Beckett. Lived in Paris most of his life. His plays include: Waiting for Godot (1953) and Krapp's Last Tape (1958). Awarded the Nobel Prize in Li...

Person, Literature, Seriously Famous, Theatre, France

1 memorial
William Henry Hudson

William Henry Hudson

Author, naturalist and ornithologist.  Born on a small ranch, Los Viente-cinco Ombúes, near Quilmes in Buenos Aires province. Came to Britain in 1874 and produced a series of ornithological studies...

Person, Literature, Science, Argentina

4 memorials
Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith

Translated Pepys's diary (written in one of the versions of shorthand used at the time) in 1819 - 22.

Person, Literature

1 memorial
Sir Henry Rider Haggard

Sir Henry Rider Haggard

Novelist. Born at Wood Farm, West Bradenham, Norfolk. At the age of nineteen he was sent to Natal to serve the Lieutenant-Governor, as his father said he was only fit to be a greengrocer. He achiev...

Person, Law, Literature, South Africa

1 memorial