Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh

Author: Evelyn Waugh

Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics

First published:1928

Setting: Oxford, Wales, London, Hampshire UK
Read in February 2014

My Rating ★★★★  4.4

My Waterstones Review

Paul Pennyfeather is in his third year as an undergraduate at the fictional Scone College, Oxford. One evening he is returning across the quad to his rooms when he is discovered by the Bollinger Club, debagged and consequently sent down for indecent behaviour. Losing his guardians allowance he takes a teaching position in a small inferior public school based in a castle in North Wales. Here he meets a motley crew of teachers, staff and pupils. Dr Fagan the headmaster, his two daughters Flossie and Dingy, their butler and professional conman Mr Soloman Philbrick, and fellow teachers Captain Grimes, ex-public school pupil of Podger's who goes through life from one crises to another being saved from "the soup" by the old-boys network, and wig wearing, pipe smoking, ex-clergyman Mr Prendergast who has developed insuperable Doubts.

Decline and Fall is a rich comedy of carefully selected  narrative and dialogue that is loosely based on Waugh's time at Oxford and as a teacher in Wales. This was his first published novel and he must have had great fun conjuring his characters, including the Countess of Circumference and their son Lord Tangent, and the Honourable Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde the attractive and wealthy mother of Peter who engineers Paul to become his private tutor and then to be engaged to his mother. Throughout there is a tongue in cheek poking of fun at the establishment and comparisons can be made to the writings of P.G. Woodhouse. Evelyn Waugh meant this to be a funny book, it is!