Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books, as well as 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). Recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century, Waugh's works are notable for their satirical wit, black humor, and observation of British aristocracy.

Waugh was the son of a publisher, educated at Lancing College and Hertford College, Oxford. Early in his career, he worked as a schoolmaster before dedicating himself to writing full-time. He was known for his fashionable and aristocratic friends and his taste for country house society. Waugh's extensive travels in the 1930s, including his role as a special newspaper correspondent during the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, featured prominently in his writing.

Serving in the British armed forces during the Second World War, Waugh's experiences and the range of people he encountered informed his fiction, often to humorous effect. After a mental breakdown in the early 1950s, Waugh even fictionalised this event in his work. His conversion to Catholicism in 1930 following a failed first marriage was a defining moment in his life, influencing his traditionalist views. Waugh married Laura Herbert in 1937 and had three children.

Despite his public persona of indifference, Waugh was known for his kindness to his friends. His later years were marked by opposition to the reform of the Church, particularly the changes of the Second Vatican Council, and by dismay at the postwar welfare state culture. Though his health declined, he continued to write until his death in 1966. Waugh's legacy was further cemented through film and television adaptations of his works, most notably the television serial Brideshead Revisited (1981).