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Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer. His best-known works include his early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), his novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) and his trilogy of Second World War novels collectively known as Sword of Honour (1952–61). Waugh, a conservative Roman Catholic whose views were often trenchantly expressed, is widely recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century. In the 1930s he travelled extensively, often as a special newspaper correspondent. He served in the British armed forces throughout the Second World War, first in the Royal Marines and later in the Royal Horse Guards. All these experiences, and the wide range of people he encountered, were used in Waugh's fiction, generally to humorous effect; even his own mental breakdown in the early 1950s, brought about by misuse of drugs, was fictionalised. After his death in 1966 he acquired a new following through film and television versions of his work, most memorably Brideshead Revisited in 1982. (more...)

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May 26: Independence Day in Georgia (1918); Mother's Day in Poland

• 1328 – William of Ockham, an English friar who originated the methodological principle Occam's razor, secretly left Avignon under threat from Pope John XXII.
• 1857 – American slave Dred Scott (pictured), who had previously unsuccessfully sued for his freedom, was emancipated by Henry Taylor Blow, his original owner.
• 1897 – Irish author Bram Stoker's most famous novel Dracula was first published.
• 1938 – The House Un-American Activities Committee was established to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities by people or organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties.
• 1940 – World War II: A flotilla of "little ships" began a mass evacuation of British, French and Belgian troops cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk.

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