Word: evelyn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...EVELYN WAUGH, A BIOGRAPHY
...this century's funniest writers, Evelyn Waugh was also one of its most melancholy, a man submerged in private rancor. "You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic," he informed a friend. "Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being...
Waugh's youth was by no means blighted. His family was congenial-his father Arthur ran a small but prestigious publishing house-and lived comfortably in a London suburb, amid books and talk of books. The adolescent Evelyn saw Oxford as a kind of enchanted kingdom. For a time he became one of its leading fauns, an aesthete shuttling between Hamletic conversation and Falstaffian drinking. After graduation, Waugh had a desultory try at being an artist. Failing at that, he became a teacher at third-rate boarding schools. He began a book, informing the curious that he was writing...
Adrenaline World. Sykes is almost as coy about Waugh's "straight" life. Evelyn married early-only to have his wife run off with a friend. A few years later he married again, more happily, and eventually fathered three sons and three daughters...
...World War II, Evelyn was something of a misfit. Despite an ample display of valor in the battle for Crete, the insubordinate officer was passed from general to general. In Yugoslavia, Evelyn amused himself by circulating a story that Tito was a lesbian in drag. The story caught up with the marshal. "Ask Captain Waugh," he told the British commander, "why he thinks I am a woman." For the only time in his life, the writer was at a loss for words...