Books: A Class War

THE END OF THE BATTLE (319 pp.)—Evelyn Waugh—Little, Brown ($4.50).

The most accomplished contemporary stylist in the English language—sometime satirist, religious romantic and biographer —is also a social historian of sorts. With The End of the Battle, Evelyn Waugh completes a trilogy of novels about a segment of Britain in World War II. Neither as bouncy as Men at Arms nor as dissonant as Officers and Gentlemen, the third of the three is a blues for a bygone time.

Britain in Waughtime is a top-drawer, old-school-tie kind of place; many of the characters belong to...