EVELYN WAUGH
(Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh)
For many years, the English Customs Service would prevent books and other literature from being brought into the country if the authorities thought that they were seditious or unwholesome. The right to publish and the right to read was stronger for locally produced sedition or pornography than for imported where there were severe restrictions until recently. America had similar restrictions at the time.
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.