Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he also travelled extensively and converted to Catholicism. In 1939 Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, experiences which informed his Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61). His most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), was written while on leave from the army. Waugh died in 1966.

Evelyn Waugh

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Maureen Duffy

Many of the Londoners in this novel are outcasts - some are criminals in society’s eyes. Most are descended from adventurers and immigrants. The worlds they inhabit - the bedsit; the cruisers’ pub - lie cheek by jowl with the worlds of the affluent and successful - the smart restaurant, the House of Commons Committee room. 
 
Al, the narrator, is a Londoner born and bred, a writer living in a small room in West London. Most of the other residents in the cavernous Victorian house - and the friends and acquaintances Al meets in tow local pubs, the bohemian and relaxed crowd at the Nevern and the slightly more ambiguous and dangerous crowd at the Knacker’s - are Londoners by adoption, some temporary exiles, some permanent.

Londoners

Wounds begins with two lovers in bed. Their lovemaking throughout the book forms a recurring lietmotif, a counterpoint to the examination of the spiritual death of the characters. 
 
In a South London environment of pub and fairground, home and work, the wounds of 20th century experience are evoked in prose which is both lyrical and precise. Kingy in her garden, ‘loved by the most handsome women in the world’; Maura the barmaid: ‘I prefer the little, thin men'; Glisten the Mayor: ‘It’ll be take-over time and too late’ — these and the many other characters illustrate the basic theme of the novel.

Wounds

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