Book of the Week

Yesterday saw the publication of the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize. The winner will be announced just after half term, and as always, we're giving Pauline readers the chance to predict who it's going to be with our annual Predict the Booker evening on Thursday 16th October. Six Pauline readers each recommend one of the novels on the shortlist and lobby for the audience vote as we decide who'll be the winner. Our track record so far is dire: but could this be the year we finally get it right?  You can read our report on last year's Predict the Booker evening here, and if you'd like to be one of this year's readers, contact Mrs Cummings in the Kayton Library.  Meanwhile, here's our book of the week.  

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Recommended by Tom Baughan

“I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.”

So go the closing lines of the opening scene in Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Decline and Fall. Published in 1928, four years after he came down from Oxford, Decline and Fall was the first of Waugh’s successful novels. It was written as a satire of the British establishment and society in the 1920s, especially the type of society that Waugh became acquainted with through his time at Oxford, where he befriended both literary figures and aristocrats.

It follows the misadventures of Paul Pennyfeather as he traverses his way through teaching at a minor public school, a romance with a wealthy widow, and a brief stint in a prison, to name a few situations he finds himself in. Waugh uses the literary device of victim as hero, with Pennyfeather having seemingly no control over the events he found himself in. He is surrounded by grotesque caricatures, often based on Waugh’s friends or enemies. These characters are often dark, such as Captain Grimes, a deeply dubious schoolmaster. Their behaviour creates the comic effect in the novel, such as the characters’ indifference to the death of the schoolboy Lord Tangent, accidentally shot on sports day. Characters often recur as Paul progresses through the novel, in wildly different citations, adding to the comedy.

The world that Waugh creates is part real, part fantasy. It has autobiographical elements. Waugh taught at the Welsh prep school Arnold House, which becomes Llanabba Castle in the novel. He depicts a chaotic world, and with fantastical elements, such as Paul not knowing why he is put on trial. These elements are comic but also give an idea of a world out of control. It is Waugh’s satire of the contemporary culture that he found himself in, the post WW1 generation of The Bright Young Things and their chaotic behaviour. This was further satirised in his second novel Vile Bodies.

This was Evelyn Waugh’s debut novel and, alongside later works Scoop and Brideshead Revisited, helped make him one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.