Decline and FallEvelyn Waugh's hilarious debut novel, with an introduction by Barbara Cooke. Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather embarks on a series of bizarre adventures that start in a minor public school and end in one of HM prisons. In this, his first and funniest novel, Evelyn Waugh immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingenu abroad in the razzmatazz of Twenties high society.