 During his remaining time at Hertford, Waugh missed few opportunities to ridicule Cruttwell. He did this in numerous unsigned contributions to Isis, including an article in March 1924, in the "Isis Idols" series. In this, according to Waugh's biographer Martin Stannard, the mockery was cleverly disguised as a paean of praise, arranged around an unflattering photograph of Cruttwell displaying "bad teeth within an unfortunate smile". In Cherwell, in August 1923, Waugh published a short story, "Edward of Unique Achievement", in which the protagonist, a history student at an Oxford college, murders his tutor, "Mr Curtis" (who is, among other things, revealed to be a sexual deviant). Waugh and an accomplice, spread a rumour that Cruttwell favoured sex with animals; they bought a stuffed dog which they placed in the college quadrangle and began the practice of barking under the dean's window. Cruttwell made no apparent response to these provocations, other than a dismissive reference to Waugh as "a silly suburban sod with an inferiority complex".
