Hellfire

Late one evening in March 1924, a tipsy young nun was seen trying to slip into Balliol, an all-male Oxford college, just as the gates were about to close for the night. The nun ¿ subsequently unmasked as the son of the college bursar ¿ was returning after a fancy-dress party at a notorious Oxford social club, one known to the university proctors for its hedonistic ways, heavy drinking and wayward behaviour. This was the final straw; the club was shut down.

Described by one habitu¿s ¿a kind of early twentieth-century Hell Fire Club¿, the Hypocrites Club counted some of the brightest of the future ¿Bright Young People¿ among its members. The one-time secretary was Evelyn Waugh, who used ten of his fellow Hypocrites as inspiration for his fictional characters ¿ seven of them in Brideshead Revisited alone.

The Hypocrites didn¿t just lend themselves to Waugh¿s fiction. Many went on to prominence themselves, including Anthony Powell, Robert Byron, Henry Green,