The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time.

A fourth collection of poems This Chaos was publiHarold Actond in Paris by Harold’s friend Nancy Cunard though the Giangastone translation pointed in a more promising direction. Arlington) Peiping Henri Vetch 1937. Prince Isidore London Methuen 1950.

" It would seem that Waugh like many other writers peopled his novels with composite characters based upon individuals he personally knew and that while neither Howard nor Acton can be totally identified on a one-to-one basis with any particular character neither can their influence in large part or small measure be completely ignored. That being said we must also note that in a letter to Lord Baldwin an elucidating Waugh reveals "There is an aesthetic bugger who sometimes turns up in my novels under various names -- that was 2/3 Brian [Howard] and 1/3 Harold Acton. Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton KBE (5 July 1904 – 27 February 1994) was a British writer scholar and dilettante perhaps most famous for being wrongly believed to have inspired (in whole) the character of "Anthony Blanche" in Evelyn Waugh's novel BrideHarold Actonad Revisited (1945).