Rating: 
Summary: Brit Biting Brits
Review: One of the great, funny, short reads that I have encountered. Waugh weaves satiric barbs into the pretentious, absurd fabric of post-WWI British "society" (which persists to the present day in its basic form). One of the basic treatises is that British public (i.e. private) schooling for the upper classes is perfect training for (and perfectly compatible with) prison life. The prejudices, vanities, idiocies and random injustices of the privileged and pedigreed are shown up for sport and ridicule. Waugh knows his subject and fairly skewers it in great humor for the reader's enjoyment.
Rating:
Summary: Pomp and Anarchy
Review: One of Waugh's comic masterpieces, Decline and Fall stands as a hilarious meditation on the calamities imposed on the support players in a superficially dignified world. Waugh's brief first novel is a scathing send up of 20th century aristocracy and its institutions, beginning with public (i.e., private, in Britain) boarding schools and progressing on, uproariously and yet somehow logically, to the British prison system.
All the stylistic reserve and precision of Waugh's later works are in place in this novel, the earlier sections of which are loosely based on the author's brief stint as a teacher at an all-boys school. But Tom Brown's School Days this isn't. Mad deans, criminal instructors, worldly lads and promiscuous parents all provide gusts of absurd comedy that keep this whirlwind of absurd happenstance and hypocrisy twisting. Protagonist Pennyfeather blithely ricochets between charges of indecency and pimping with little notion of his own culpability--indeed, there is none. When, at the novel's end, his fortunes run full circle, the valuelessness of aristocratic standing is confirmed, as is Waugh's early promise as a satirist of the first rank.
Rating: 
Summary: I get to read this classic again!
Review: Our book club has decided to do Decline and Fall. It's been over 30 years since I last read this masterpiece. Oh what a treat to read it again!
Rating: 
Summary: A Light, Humorous Satire
Review: Poor Paul Pennyfeather! As the "hero" of Evelyn Waugh's first novel he is barely worth a cent and light as pillow stuffing. This flimsiness of character may cause concern unto lack of concern in the reader who wishes to strongly identify with the protagonist, but halfway through the book, Waugh's narrator assures us that Pennyfeather's hollowness is intentional: "In fact, the whole of this book is really an account of the mysterious disappearance of Paul Pennyfeather, so that readers must not complain if the shadow which took his name does not amply fill the important part of hero for which he was originally cast." Pennyfeather is someone who is acted upon more than he acts--perhaps it is better to say he is more sinned against than sinning--his story begins when he is attacked in an Oxford quad by a group of his snobbish bully classmates. They strip him naked from the waist down and before he knows it the university has expelled him for indecent behavior. He then loses his allowance and ends up teaching in a disreputable prep school in Wales where adventures continue to be inflicted upon him. Waugh never allows Pennyfeather to defend himself, his satirical point being that an English gentleman wouldn't stoop to blame those who had wronged him, even if it means he goes to jail. After all, his irrepressible fellow teacher Grimes tells Paul, no matter how bad things get, there is "a blessed equity in the English social system that insures the public school man [public schools in England are actually private] against starvation." It's that social system that the young Waugh, twenty-five when this book was published, enjoys puffing up just to tear it down. Waugh maintains a light narrative touch though his subject matter is often serious and occasionally outrageous. He structures the book well and has a sharp appreciation for the absurdities of the English upper classes in the 1920s that is not inapplicable to many other time periods and cultures. DECLINE AND FALL did not make me laugh as much as I thought it might. There are funnier English campus comedies out there, notably Kingsley Amis's LUCKY JIM and the first part of Waugh's own BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. Waugh was one of the twentieth century's great stylists, however, and I look forward to reading his second book, VILE BODIES.
Rating:
Summary: Somebody got the reviews mixed up
Review: The reviews attached to Decline and Fall seem to be reviews of The Loved One. What happened?
Rating:
Summary: Assured hilarity
Review: This book has become my personal invitation to screaming, stomach grasping laughter. Waugh's portrayal of the particular bigotries, blindnesses and vanities of the various members of the British class system; the manner by which it invades every personality and way of thinking lends a good shaking up to contemporay myopia and to my funny bone. And though I may have laughed before, I have never been so guaranteed of a side splitting mood changer as when I pick up this book and begin to read. Alas, although I've read just about everything else Waugh wrote, and God knows loved, nothing in his enormous body of great writing reached this level of perfection and perfect aim.
Rating:
Summary: Top-Notch
Review: This book ranks among my favorites ever. The wicked are handsomely rewarded and the good go to prison. I still catch myself substituting Waugh's lyrics for "O God Our Help in Ages Past."
Rating:
Summary: A comic milestone
Review: This has to be one of the funniest novels ever written. For sheer laugh-power per page nothing else I've read comes close. I put Waugh in the same class with Cervantes, Fielding and Twain as a world-class humorist.
Rating:
Summary: evelyn kick's a**!!!!!
Review: This hilarious classic combines with entwines satirical humour a proportionate observation of british society in the early twentieth century with pure entertainment. Evelyn tackles scenes of ridiculous hilarity with wonderous talent this novel is pure genious. I loved the scene in the church. The characters are perfectly formed in their originality and build most of the comedy of this brilliant novel well worth the time and money to read for all ages!!!
Rating:
Summary: an acid satire
Review: This is an under-read classic. The hapless hero, having been chucked out of university, lands in a barely respectable public school. What follows is an hilarious skewering of twentieth century society in microcosm. Sex, art, money, and, of course, class, figure prominently, with a sly nod at race, to boot. Never a dull moment.
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