[Adrian Fry]

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.