Editing Decline and Fall (section)

==Critical reception==
''[[The Guardian]]'', in 1928, praised the book as "a great lark; its author has an agreeable sense of comedy and characterisation, and the gift of writing smart and telling conversation, while his drawings are quite in tune with the spirit of the tale". The newspaper also compared the superficial presentation in the novel to that employed by [[P. G. Wodehouse]].<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/1928/oct/12/classics Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (classics)] The Guardian. 12 October 1928</ref> [[Arnold Bennett]] hailed it as "an uncompromising and brilliantly malicious satire"<ref>Quoted in Martin Stannard(editor), ''Evelyn Waugh, the Critical Heritage'', RKP 1984</ref> and the writer [[John Mortimer]] called it Waugh's "most perfect novel ... a ruthlessly comic plot."

In his [[biography]] of Waugh, [[journalist]] [[Christopher Sykes (author)|Christopher Sykes]] recalled, "I was in a nursing home when ''Decline and Fall'' came out, and [[Tom Driberg]] visited me and brought a copy.  He began to read out some favourite passages and was literally unable to read them to the end because he and I were so overcome by laughter."<ref>Sykes, Christopher. ''Evelyn Waugh: A Biography''.  p. 85. {{ISBN|0-316-82600-6}}</ref>

In a 2009 episode of ''[[Desert Island Discs]]'', the British actor and comedian [[David Mitchell (comedian)|David Mitchell]] named ''Decline and Fall'' as the book he would take to a desert island, calling it "one of the funniest books I've ever read" and "exactly the sort of novel I would like to have written."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00ln1b2|title=Desert Island Discs – David Mitchell|website=BBC|language=en-GB|access-date=2 November 2018}}</ref>