It has been said that every novel Evelyn Waugh wrote could be called autobiographical. Waugh led a life very similar to Charles Ryder, the narrator of one of his best novels, Brideshead Revisited. Every other major character found in the novel has also been designated one or more human counterpart. However, Waugh once said,

"But I don't regard the characters in my books as being my own circle of friends

particularly, although I've sometimes drawn characters from them ... It's always

true that a writer has to modify truth to make it plausible. If one wrote down

really what had happened to one's acquaintances, everyone would say, `It's too

extravagantly absurd. Some of these things might have happened to one person

once, they couldn't all have happened to the same person in a few months.'" (4)

In Waugh's case, dangerous and exciting events like those in his novels are...