WAUGH (Evelyn).
The Sword of Honour Trilogy. Men at Arms; Officers and Gentlemen; Unconditional Surrender.
Inscribed by the author to Ronald Knox in the second volume, Officers and Gentlemen: ‘For Ronnie with homage from Evelyn.’
Waugh and Knox became friends when Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930: Knox, who combined a Church career as RC chaplain at the University of Oxford with the authorship of detective novels, was almost as celebrated a prose stylist as Waugh. Like Waugh he was a convert, and like Waugh he came from a bourgeois background but was happiest among the aristocracy. Waugh was with him when he died and was his literary executor, the duties of which included his biography, published in 1959: “Ronnie’s death has transformed my life. Instead of sitting about bored and idle, I am busy all day long both writing his life and managing his affairs… Ronnie’s close business associates are all scrupulous dotards who write to me by every post. That part is a fiendish nuisance but I am absolutely absorbed in the biography.”
A near fine set, spines just a little faded, some light water staining to the cloth of the inscribed volume: the jacket to that volume seemingly supplied.
