I'm no literary expert, but I love Waugh's earlier satirical novels. The almost Pythonesque absurdity of Decline and Fall or Vile Bodies appealed to me as a teenager, but A Handful of Dust is a masterpiece because it combines that humour with an utter bleakness. Was he the first writer to shrug off the long-winded formality that dominated English literary style? Probably not, but I'd like it to be so.

Samuel Butler is your man. If you haven't read 'The Way of All Flesh' you should. Shaw obviously took lessons, but of course you have to like Shaw in the first place. But how could you NOT like a man who wrote a long essay to show why HIS Cleopatra was better than Shakespeare's?

Cyril Connolly has some useful discussion of 'mandarin' & 'vernacular' prose styles in Enemies of Promise.

Thanks for the book recommendation, John.

Let us know what you think of it, Adrian.