Product Description

Sent down from Oxford in outrageous circumstances, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20537 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Evelyn Waugh was born in 1903 and was educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). In 1945 he published Brideshead Revisited and he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1952 for Men at Arms. Evelyn Waugh died in 1966.

Excerpted from Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Mr Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr Sniggs’ room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College. From the rooms of Sir Alastair Digby-Vane-Trumpington, two staircases away, came a confused roaring and breaking of glass. They alone of the senior members of Scone were at home that evening, for it was the night of the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club. The others were all scattered over Boar’s Hill and North Oxford at gay, contentious little parties, or at other senior common-rooms, or at the meetings of learned societies, for the annual Bollinger dinner is a difficult time for those in authority.
It is not accurate to call this an annual event, because quite often the Club is suspended for some years after each meeting. There is tradition behind the Bollinger; it numbers reigning kings among its past members. At the last dinner, three years ago, a fox had been brought in in a cage and stoned to death with champagne bottles. What an evening that had been! This was the first meeting since then, and from all over Europe old members had rallied for the occasion. For two days they had been pouring into Oxford: epileptic royalty from their villas of exile; uncouth peers from crumbling country seats; smooth young men of uncertain tastes from embassies and legations; illiterate lairds from wet granite hovels in the Highlands; ambitious young barristers and Conservative candidates torn from the London season and the indelicate advances of debutantes; all that was most sonorous of name and title was there for the beano.

‘The fines!’ said Mr Sniggs, gently rubbing his pipe along the side of his nose. ‘Oh my! the fines there’ll be after this evening!’

There is some highly prized port in the senior common-room cellars that is only brought up when the College fines have reached £50.

‘We shall have a week of it at least,’ said Mr Postlethwaite, ‘a week of Founder’s port.’

A shriller note could now be heard rising from Sir Alastair’s rooms; any who have heard that sound will shrink at the recollection of it; it is the sound of English county families baying for broken glass. Soon they would all be tumbling out into the quad, crimson and roaring in their bottle-green evening coats, for the real romp of the evening.

‘Don’t you think it would be wiser if we turned out the light?’ said Mr Sniggs.

In the darkness the two dons crept to the window. The quad below was a kaleidoscope of dimly discernible faces.

‘There must be fifty of them at least,’ said Mr Postlethwaite. ‘If only they were all members of the College! Fifty of them at ten pounds each. Oh my!’

‘It’ll be more if they attack the Chapel,’ said Mr Sniggs. ‘Oh, please God, make them attack the Chapel.’

‘I wonder who the unpopular undergraduates are this term. They always attack their rooms. I hope they have been wise enough to go out for the evening.’

‘I think Partridge will be one; he possesses a painting by Matisse or some such name.’

‘And I’m told he has black sheets on his bed.’

‘And Sanders went to dinner with Ramsay MacDonald once.’

‘And Rending can afford to hunt, but collects china instead.’

‘And smokes cigars in the garden after breakfast.’

‘Austen has a grand piano.’

‘They’ll enjoy smashing that.’

‘There’ll be a heavy bill for to-night; just you see! But I confess I should feel easier if the Dean or the Master were in. They can’t see us from here, can they?’

It was a lovely evening. They broke up Mr Austen’s grand piano, and stamped Lord Rending’s cigars into his carpet, and smashed his china, and tore up Mr Partridge’s sheets, and threw the Matisse into his water-jug; Mr Sanders had nothing to break except his windows, but they found the manuscript at which he had been working for the Newdigate Prize Poem, and had great fun with that. Sir Alastair Digby-Vane-Trumpington felt quite ill with excitement, and was supported to bed by Lumsden of Strathdrummond. It was half-past eleven. Soon the evening would come to an end. But there was still a treat to come.

Customer Reviews

Classic
This is one of the books that made me love english litterature. It is so wonderfully absurd and at the same time accurate in it's description of british society and education around 1930. When I sometime tires of Wodehouse and the constant mix-ups of his (otherwise wonderful) tales about Jeeves & Wooster, Psmith or Blandings Castle, Waugh is my choice. It is down to earth, but extremely funny.

Young man Pennyfeather is expelled from Oxford due, through no fault of his own, to indecent behaviour. He becomes schoolmaster at a school in Wales which, frankly, is not very good. He falls in love, and the rest of the plot is for you to find out.

I can tell you, however, that in this book Waugh covers so diverse subjects as prisons, religion, education, architecture (at this point, one might rightly wonder if it's Bentham I'm reviewing instead of Waugh, but no!), glamour, greed, insanity, worldwide cooperation, Welsh music, teenage boys and alcohol. And even if you like or dislike some, or most of these things, Waugh makes them seem so absurd that you can't help but smile at his descriptions of everyday life in those very specific circles.

Go on and read it - it's cheap, it's a classic and it is one of the most entertaining and clever books I've ever read.

Possibly the funniest book ever written
This is the tale of innocence, academia, love, ladies of less than perfect character and the behaviour/ misbehaviour of the class system. The funniest scene ever is the school sports day and the start of the running race. I will leave the rest for you to enjoy. If you have to read one book from Waugh then read this one. You will not want to put it down.

Waugh At His Best
"Oh I shouldn't try to teach them anything yet"

Decline and Fall is simply one of the greatest novels I have ever read. It is laugh out loud funny whilst also moving the reader to care deeply for these fates of it's bumbling characters.

The story is easily epitomized by the title. Paul Pennyfather is a theological student at Oxford. Unfortunately despite being an inoffensive individual he is "sent down" from Oxford for an incident. The incident in question involves running across the quad sans pantaloon.

When he is cut from his fathers will he has no money and only one option- become a teacher.

The high jinks of his time as a teacher in Wales continue to constitute his fall until he falls prey to a sophisticated seductress and things go downhill from then on.

The brilliance of Waugh's wit shines throughout the novel as it cuttingly attacks and mocks the British Public School, the class structure of the early 20th Century and the scandals the British newspapers thrive upon.

Waugh's wit is augmented by a story that holds together and is fast paced. This keeps the jokes fresh and in abundance.

And the sum total of this narrative is that we learn nothing. Paul reflects that "there was not much to be gained by our knowing each other". Instead the novel is about what life means not "physiological implications of growth and organic change" instead the difference between people who are static and those who are dynamic. This difference Waugh supposes is that Paul was destined to be static and somehow got caught up in this glamorous world completely by chance.

Thus "Decline And Fall" stands as a warning about fame, particularly in this "heat" generation more than 70 years after it's publication. Waugh shows through Pennyfather that fame has a price and one that we may not be able to afford. Not all of us are cut out to be dynamic- that is hanging on to the wheel for dear life.

"Decline and Fall" stands the test of time because the strength of this underlying message and leaves one with a feeling of utter joy and a burning compulsion to turn the page and start the whole damn thing again.