Introduction: What Is This Book About?

Summary

In the new foreword to the 1965 edition of his novel Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh wrote: ‘On reading the book I realized that I had done something quite outside my original intention. I had written an obituary of the Roman Catholic Church in England as it had existed for many centuries. All the rites and most of the opinions here described are already obsolete. When I wrote Brideshead Revisited I was consciously writing an obituary of the doomed English upper class. It never occurred to me, writing Sword of Honour that the Church was susceptible to change. I was wrong and I have seen a superficial revolution in what then seemed permanent.’ These few lines – written by an artist who was also an authority – describe a problem better than the many pages of a writer who is certainly not an artist and perhaps not even an authority. Waugh sees change, senses decay, and thinks that he has written an obituary. If he is right, then this book is an obituary, too. But is he right?