num_pages: 293
description: Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul. Taking its title from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Evelyn Waugh's first, funniest novel immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingénu abroad in the decadent confusion of 1920s high society.
language: English
title: Decline and Fall
titlecomplete: Decline and Fall
characters: Solomon Philbrick, Sebastien Cholmondley, Captain Edgar Grimes, Lady Circumference, Augustus Fagan, Professor Otto Silenus, Basil Seal, Krikor Yokoumian, Sir Humphrey Maltravers, Mr. Prendergast, Arthur Potts, Paul Pennyfeather, Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery, Peter Beste-Chetwynde, Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington, Dingy Fagan, Tangent Circumference, Sam Clutterbuck, Lady Margot Beste-Chetwynde, Flossie Fagan
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Modern Classics, Novels, Comedy, Fiction, Humor, British Literature
ratings_count: 13895
places: United Kingdom, African Coast, Wales
publisher: Back Bay Books