Evelyn Waugh, born on October 28, 1903, in London, was one of the most prominent British writers of the 20th century. Waugh was born into a literary family; his father, Arthur Waugh, was a publisher and literary critic, and his older brother, Alec Waugh, was also a writer. Evelyn grew up in a privileged environment that exposed him to literature and the arts from a young age. He attended Lancing College, a public (known in the US as private) school in West Sussex, where he developed an early interest in writing and a lifelong disdain for the English upper class despite his own privileged background. This disdain is evident in his satire of the gentry in A Handful of Dust.

In 1922, Waugh went on to study history at Hertford College, Oxford. His time at Oxford was marked by his involvement in the hedonistic lifestyle of the “Brideshead generation,” a group of young men who indulged in excessive drinking, extravagant parties, and a general disdain for the conventional values of their parents’ generation. However, Waugh’s academic career was less successful. He left Oxford without a degree in 1924, a failure that reflected his growing disillusionment with academia and the social environment at the university.