TITLE: EVELYN WAUGH: THE LATER YEARS 1939-1966
AUTHOR: MARTIN STANNARD
PUBLISHER: NORTON; 523 PAGES; $29.95
THE BOTTOM LINE: A complex master of comic prose gets the biography he deserves.
At a World War II training base of Britain's Royal Marines, the commanding officer ends his tirade against officers who had seen to their own comfort before that of their men with a purely rhetorical "Any questions?" One moderately adipose and overage (36) lieutenant does have an inquiry. "Would you not agree, sir," he asks, "that it would be ever so much nicer if there were no Marine soldiers and everyone could...