num_pages: 304
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: Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery, Lady Circumference, Paul Pennyfeather, Professor Otto Silenus, Basil Seal, Arthur Potts, Solomon Philbrick, Sebastien Cholmondley, Sam Clutterbuck, Krikor Yokoumian, Captain Edgar Grimes, Tangent Circumference, Sir Humphrey Maltravers, Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington, Lady Margot Beste-Chetwynde, Flossie Fagan, Augustus Fagan, Dingy Fagan, Mr. Prendergast, Peter Beste-Chetwynde
genres: Humor, Novels, Literary Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Modern Classics, Fiction, Comedy, Literature, 20th Century
ratings_count: 13901
places: United Kingdom, Wales, African Coast
publisher: Penguin Books Ltd