A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England-s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, -Brideshead Revisited-.Evelyn Waugh was already famous when -Brideshead Revisited- was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no -immediate propaganda value-. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith - an elegy, in many ways, for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier.The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts in -Brideshead Revisited-. In this engrossing biography, Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through those friendships that mattered most to him. Far from the snobbish misanthropist o
