Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
Leonard Constant Lambert was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and he was a major figure in the establishment of the English ballet as a significant artistic movement.
Anthony Dymoke Powell was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English.
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles Ryder, most especially his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle. Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes: Sebastian and Julia. The novel explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy. A faithful and well-received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11-part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981.
Don Juan, also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina, a 1665 play, Dom Juan, by Molière, a 1787 opera, Don Giovanni, with music by Mozart and a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and a satirical, epic poem, Don Juan, by Lord Byron.
Vile Bodies is the second novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1930. It satirises the bright young things, the rich young people partying in London after World War I, and the press which fed on their doings. The original title Bright Young Things, which Waugh changed because he thought the phrase had become too clichéd, was used in Stephen Fry's 2003 film adaptation. The eventual title appears in a comment made by the novel's narrator in reference to the characters' party-driven lifestyle: "All that succession and repetition of massed humanity... Those vile bodies...". The book was dedicated to B. G. and D. G., Waugh's friends Bryan Guinness and his wife Diana.
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton was a British writer, scholar, and aesthete who was a prominent member of the Bright Young Things. He wrote fiction, biography, history and autobiography. During his stay in China, he studied the Chinese language, traditional drama, and poetry, some of which he translated.
Brian Christian de Claiborne Howard was an English poet and later a writer for the New Statesman.
Alfred Duggan was an English historian and archaeologist, and a well-known historical novelist in the 1950s. His novels are known for meticulous historical research.
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in July 1957. It is Waugh's penultimate full-length work of fiction, which the author called his "mad book"—a largely autobiographical account of a period of hallucinations caused by bromide intoxication that he experienced in the early months of 1954, recounted through his protagonist Gilbert Pinfold.
Kenneth Widmerpool is a fictional character in Anthony Powell's novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time, a 12-volume account of upper-class and bohemian life in Britain between 1920 and 1970. Regarded by critics as one of the more memorable characters of 20th century fiction, Widmerpool is the antithesis of the sequence's narrator-hero Nicholas Jenkins. Initially presented as a comic, even pathetic figure, he becomes increasingly formidable, powerful and ultimately sinister as the novels progress. He is successful in business, in the army and in politics, and is awarded a life peerage. His only sphere of failure is his relationships with women, exemplified by his disastrous marriage to Pamela Flitton. The sequence ends with Widmerpool's downfall and death, in circumstances arising from his involvement with a New Age-type cult.
Major Sir Henry Joseph d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 2nd Baronet,, sometimes known as Harry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, was a British Army officer, company director and politician.
Afternoon Men is the first published novel by the English writer Anthony Powell. In its characters and themes it anticipates some of the ground Powell would cover in A Dance to the Music of Time, a twelve-volume cycle that spans much of the 20th century and is widely considered Powell's masterpiece.
Hubert John Duggan was a British Army officer and politician, who was Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Acton from 1931 until his death. He was an opponent of appeasement and broke the whip on several important occasions, voting to bring down Neville Chamberlain in 1940.
The Temple at Thatch was an unpublished novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented unfavourably on the draft in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments he began a suicide attempt before experiencing what he termed "a sharp return to good sense".
Somerhill House is a Grade I listed Jacobean mansion situated near Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom. It was built for The 4th Earl of Clanricarde in 1611–13. The estate was sequestrated by Parliament in 1645, and restored to its rightful owner in 1660. The building had become derelict by the mid-eighteenth century but was later restored. Somerhill was painted by Turner in 1811. It was bought by a member of the Goldsmid family in 1849 and greatly extended between 1879 and 1897, making it the second largest house in Kent, after Knole House, Sevenoaks.
Richard George Hubert Plunket Greene was an English racing motorist, a jazz musician and author.
The Hypocrites' Club was one of the student clubs at Oxford University in England. Its motto in Greek, from an Olympian Ode by Pindar, was Water is best. This led to the members being called Hypocrites, due to the fact that beer, wine and spirits were the chosen drinks.
Olivia Honor Mary Plunket Greene, together with her brothers Richard and David, was part of the Bright Young Things who inspired the novel Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, who was Olivia's suitor.
