C.S. Lewis and Evelyn Waugh: A Fight in Arcadia

Introduction

C.S. Lewis and Evelyn Waugh are two of the most loved authors in the Christian imagination. They shared the twentieth century, and they both studied at Oxford. Even though Waugh left college shortly before the final examinations, the two writers did overlap during the academic year 1922-1923.

For Waugh, Oxford was the university city that he used for source material, not least for Brideshead Revisited’s “Arcadia.” For Lewis, Oxford was also an Arcadia of sorts: the idyllic place where he met Tolkien and founded with him and their friends “The Inklings,” but also the home of the university where he launched an outstanding academic career.