Decline and Fall

The “enormously funny” satire of prewar British society by the New York Times–bestselling author of Brideshead Revisited (The Telegraph).

Theology student Paul Pennyfeather has been unceremoniously ejected from Scone College after the rambunctious members of the elite Bollinger Club deprived him of his trousers, leaving him to run across campus in a highly inappropriate manner. As a result, his allowance is cut off, and he has no choice but to accept work as a schoolmaster in North Wales, where the behavior he witnesses makes the Bollinger Club’s drunken rampages look like afternoon tea parties. And it only gets worse from there.

“One is occasionally reminded of P. G. Wodehouse.” —The Guardian

“An extravaganza, a satire on old school ties, on smart set house-parties, on a social order which the war is bringing to its end.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Its humor, blithe and madcap in dealing with the most revered British traditions, is spontaneous and irresistible.” —The New York Times