the gas fire, eating sardines from the tin with a shoe horn." Waugh's humor, Ep- stein says, "would not have been possible if not dressed out in his care- fully measured prose . . . the straight face from behind which the smashing punch lines are delivered."
The English writer's personal life was far from carefully measured. A convert to Catholicism at age 27 (after his first wife left him for another man), later a heavy drinker and drug user, Waugh was renowned for his social brutality....