SWORD OF HONOUR
by Evelyn Waugh
Both a "recension" (Waugh before his death excised some of the original material) as well as a one-volume publication of the World War II trilogy— Men at Arms (1952) Officers and Gentleman (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961) which Waugh thought of as "obituary of the Roman Catholic Church in England." Some critics, Malcolm Muggeridge for instance, considered this ironic, absurd, affecting (and autobiographical) portrait of a middle aged man at war his finest achievement.