Evelyn Waugh’s death, sixty years on

On Easter Sunday, April 10, 1966, Evelyn Waugh was at his most benign. He had not seemed this content for years. With his family, he had just heard Mass, celebrated by his favourite Jesuit, Fr Philip Caraman SJ, in the ancient, beleaguered Tridentine rite at a church near his country house, Combe Florey, in Somerset. After the family party returned home, he retreated to the downstairs lavatory, where he suffered a fatal coronary. He could not have chosen a better day, the Feast of the Resurrection, to meet his Maker.