Editing Evelyn Waugh (section)

=== Conversion to Catholicism ===

On 29 September 1930, Waugh was received into the Catholic Church. This shocked his family and surprised some of his friends, but he had contemplated the step for some time.<ref name= Patey35>Patey, pp. 35–39</ref> He had lost his Anglicanism at Lancing and had led an irreligious life at Oxford, but there are references in his diaries from the mid-1920s to religious discussion and regular churchgoing. On 22 December 1925, Waugh wrote: "Claud and I took Audrey to supper and sat up until 7 in the morning arguing about the Roman Church".<ref>Waugh diaries, 22 December 1926: Davie (ed.), p. 237</ref> The entry for 20 February 1927 includes, "I am to visit a Father Underhill about being a parson".<ref>Waugh diaries, 20 February 1927: Davie (ed.), p. 281</ref> Throughout the period, Waugh was influenced by his friend Olivia Plunket-Greene, who had converted in 1925 and of whom Waugh later wrote, "She bullied me into the Church".<ref>Sykes, p. 107</ref> It was she who led him to Father [[Martin D'Arcy]], a [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]], who persuaded Waugh "on firm intellectual convictions but little emotion" that "the Christian revelation was genuine". In 1949, Waugh explained that his conversion followed his realisation that life was "unintelligible and unendurable without God".<ref name= Gallagher366>"Come Inside", first published in ''The Road to Damascus'' (1949), ed. John O'Brien. London, W.H. Allen, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.). pp. 366–368</ref>