Officers and Gentlemen. Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1955. First US Edition. Pp 339. Publisher’s blue buckram boards, title lettered in gilt to spine, & pictorial dust jacket. Light dust soiling to upper fore-edge, jacket lightly chipped along upper & lower margins, contetns pages clean & bright throughout.

Presentation copy, Inscribed by the Author on front free endpaper: “To Diana, with greetings, from Evelyn.”

The second volume in what became Waugh’s ‘Sword of Honour’ trilogy, the others being ‘Men at Arms’ (1952) and ‘Unconditional Surrender’ (1961). Never planned as a trilogy, Waugh said after completing Men At Arms “I thought at first the story would run into three volumes. I find that two will do the trick.” However he later changed his mind and completed the sequence with ‘Unconditional Surrender.’

Loosely paralleling Waugh’s experiences during Second World, the protagonist is Guy Crouchback, heir of a declining aristocratic English Roman Catholic family who, like Waugh, participated in the Dakar expedition, served a stint with the commandos on Crete, and ended the war in Yugoslavia.