As a young man, Proust began by writing parodies of his contemporaries, and the writing of parody is an act of comic criticism. In this he was as accomplished as Max Beerbohm, his contemporary. The parodist is still evident in the novel: the talk, for example, of Bloch and Dr Cottard (in which Waugh found, or pretended to find, nothing funny) is not a representation of how people might actually speak, any more than Mr Micawber’s language is “true to life” – it’s true only to Dickens’s conception of Mr Micawber. And, with apologies to Waugh, I still, after many readings, find Bloch and Cottard as funny as Micawber, or indeed as some of Waugh’s own joyous creations, such as the sublime Arthur Atwater in Work Suspended – not true to life, but true in life.