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Douglas Lane Patey. The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography. Oxford, Eng. / Malden, Ma. Blackwell. 1998. xviii + 448 pages, ill. 25/$44.95. ISBN 0-631-18933-5.
Readers who enjoyed Selina Hastings's biography of Evelyn Waugh (1995; see WLT 69:4, p. 804) for its details about the social milieu in which the subject moved will not much care for Douglas Lane Patey's biography. Those who reveled in Martin Stannard's extensive compilation of facts (see e.g. WI T62:2, p. 286) and still more in his ascription of the worst possible motives to every thought and action of Waugh's life will like it even less. But those who take seriously not only Waugh's writing but the ideas that lay behind it will be surprised and grateful for Patey's broad knowledge not only of philosophy and theology but...