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Evelyn Waugh Some final comments Guardian (0 comments)

Extract from the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/1994/oct/30/biography.evelynwaugh

 

In the end, however, with the papacy of John XXIII, even that rock-like edifice began to totter, and Waugh sank into what the Church considered one of the gravest sins: despair.

 

'My life is roughly speaking over. I sleep badly except occasionally in the morning. I get up late. I try to read my letters. I try to read the paper. I have some gin. I try to read the paper again. I have some more gin. I try to think about my autobiography, then I have some more gin and it's lunchtime. That's my life. It's ghastly.'

 

Late on the morning of Easter Sunday, 1966, he collapsed and died in the downstairs lavatory at Combe Florey. He was 63