Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh was born in London in 1903 and became one of the best-known English prose writers of the twentieth century, publishing novels including Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited. His fiction combined satire, social observation and an increasingly strong interest in religion, memory and the collapse of older institutions.

During the Second World War Waugh served first with the Royal Marines and later in commando and liaison roles. He took part in operations in the eastern Mediterranean and experienced the British withdrawal from Crete in 1941, experiences that later contributed to the military world of his Sword of Honour trilogy. He died in Somerset in 1966.

In Iain Gale’s Jackals’ Revenge, Waugh appears among the real and fictional irregulars caught up in the British retreat through Greece and the defence of Crete. His historical wartime presence helps anchor Peter Lamb’s fictional unit in the confused coalition of soldiers, civilians and unconventional forces involved in the 1941 campaign.