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...)
... that the approximately 1,400 caves of China's Longmen Grottoes contain about 100,000 statues, some of which are only 1 inch (25 mm) high, while the largest Buddha statue (pictured) is 57 feet (17 m) in height?
... that although the Brazilian rodent Drymoreomys has traits that suggest it lives in trees, it is usually captured on the ground?
... that 84-year-old Gus Douglass, who was first elected as West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner in 1964, is the longest-serving state agriculture commissioner in United States history?
... that residents of a street in the British city of Preston went without council services for six weeks as part of a BBC documentary?
The European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a species of rabbit native to the Iberian Peninsula and Northwest Africa. It has been widely introduced to countries on all continents with the exception of Antarctica and Sub-Saharan Africa, often with devastating effects on local biodiversity. In Australia particularly, twelve pairs of rabbits introduced in 1859 became millions in just ten years, the fastest spread ever recorded of any mammal anywhere in the world.
This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001 (2001), it currently contains 3,644,490 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.
