Character guide

Paul Pennyfeather

major

Also known as Paul, Pennyfeather, Mr. Pennyfeather, Darling Paul

Paul begins the novel as the sort of well-mannered young man who can order dinner in creditable French and be trusted with luggage at foreign railway stations — precisely the qualities that make him helpless once he is expelled and packed off to teach at a fourth-rate Welsh school. His defining tension is that he is less a hero than a vacancy: the narrator warns that the book is really the account of his mysterious disappearance, and each new world he enters — Llanabba, Margot's set, prison — absorbs him a little further. His passivity is the engine of the early arc, letting Waugh drag an ordinary Englishman through every absurd institution of the age.

Captain Grimes

major

Also known as Grimes, Poor old Grimes

Grimes teaches at Llanabba alongside Paul, forever on the verge of being sacked and forever bouncing back, a man whose past includes Flanders, Wales, and a string of women he has somehow married or escaped. His charm is inseparable from his shamelessness: he borrows, boasts, and philanders with such good humor that even his ruinous example seems enviable. When he vanishes into Egdon Mire and is declared dead, Paul's quiet realization that Grimes is one of the immortals — a force that will rise again somewhere — gives the novel its most memorable image of resilience without virtue.

Mr. Prendergast

major

Also known as Prendergast, Prendy, Old Prendy

Prendergast teaches at Llanabba, a man so grateful for a dinner invitation that he weeps openly at the kindness, and so anxious about money that he mistakes hotel cloakroom keys for currency. His quiet crisis of vocation — he later takes orders as a chaplain while doubting the very doctrines he must teach — makes him a foil to Grimes's cheerful amorality and to Paul's drifting indifference. His vulnerability matters because Waugh lets us see, early and clearly, how the novel's casual cruelties will fall hardest on the people least equipped to absorb them.

Philbrick

supporting

Also known as Sir Solomon Philbrick, Solly Philbrick, Chick Philbrick

Philbrick serves at the Castle while spinning ever more extravagant stories about his past, and later resurfaces as the mysterious Sir Solomon Philbrick, a lavish spender at the Metropole who sends champagne to Grimes with his compliments. His charm lies in the impossibility of pinning him down: Grimes accuses him of lying, and Philbrick agrees with dignity, promising that one day his full story — stranger than fiction — will be told. He is the novel's purest embodiment of the confidence trick, a man whose identity is whatever the room requires, and his reappearances keep the reader unsure whether anyone in the book is quite what they claim.

Margot Beste-Chetwynde

major

Also known as Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde, Margot, Greta

Margot Beste-Chetwynde is the fashionable widow whose son Peter attends Llanabba, and whose engagement to Paul becomes a national sensation — announced in the papers, then shattered by his dramatic arrest hours before the wedding. Paul's long meditation on her, torn between inherited codes of honour and Peter's simple plea that you cannot see Mamma in prison, exposes the double standard at the heart of the society she rules. She matters because she is the novel's central test of whether charm, money, and beauty constitute a law unto themselves — and because Paul's answer, that there should be one law for her and another for himself, seals his fate.

Dr. Fagan

supporting

Also known as the Doctor

Dr. Fagan presides over a school housed in a sham medieval castle built by Victorian mill-owners, and he runs it on the same principle of enlightened self-interest — hiring cheap masters, tolerating Grimes until the parents complain, and lecturing Paul on the importance of tone. His blend of snobbery and sentimentality, sighing over the loss of a predecessor who borrowed money from boys, makes him a perfect comic portrait of institutional hypocrisy. He sets the tone for Paul's first descent into the working world, where every authority figure turns out to be running a slightly different con.

Peter Beste-Chetwynde

supporting

Also known as Peter, young Beste-Chetwynde

Peter moves through Llanabba as an ordinary boy with an extraordinary secret: his mother is Margot Beste-Chetwynde, and he is the young Earl of Pastmaster. When Paul agonizes over whether to shield Margot from prison, it is Peter's offhand 'You can't see Mamma in prison, can you?' that settles the question more decisively than any sermon. His serene assumption that one law exists for his mother and another for everyone else becomes the novel's quietest and most corrosive moral argument.

Flossie Fagan

minor

Also known as Miss Fagan, Florence, Miss Florence Selina Fagan

Dr. Fagan's elder daughter, a spinster.

Professor Silenus

minor

Also known as Otto Friedrich Silenus, Otto Silenus

A modernist architect who designs Margot's house.

Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington

supporting

Also known as Sir Alastair, Alastair, Trumpington

Sir Alastair belongs to the charmed circle of London society whose doings are retailed by newspapers and whose remittances are anxiously checked at the bank. He is named as best man at Margot's wedding, a position that places him at the exact intersection of wealth, fashion, and the scandal that will soon engulf Paul. Through him Waugh sketches the effortless privilege against which Paul's bewildered decency looks increasingly absurd.

Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery

supporting

Also known as Sir Wilfred, Lucas-Dockery

Sir Wilfred runs his prison with the serene confidence of a man who has read all the right books and drawn all the wrong conclusions. Where others see punishment, he sees an experiment in rehabilitation, and he is perfectly willing to gamble with a man's future to demonstrate his methods. His benevolent meddling becomes one of the novel's sharpest satires on progressive authority, and his decisions will shape Paul's fate in ways Paul never anticipates.

Sir Humphrey Maltravers

minor

Also known as Maltravers, old Maltravers

A cynical lawyer and politician involved in Paul's case.

Arthur Potts

minor

Also known as Potts

A fellow schoolmaster at Llanabba, a socialist.

Lady Circumference

minor

A formidable aristocratic mother of a Llanabba pupil.

Dingy

minor

A prostitute who befriends Paul in prison.

Clutterbuck

minor

Also known as Mr. Clutterbuck, Sam Clutterbuck

A wealthy parent of a Llanabba pupil.

Little Lord Tangent

minor

Also known as Tangent, Lord Tangent

A young pupil at Llanabba who is accidentally shot.

Colonel Sidebotham

minor

A prison visitor who takes an interest in Paul.

Mr. Cholmondley

minor

Also known as Mr. Sebastian Cholmondley

A schoolmaster at Llanabba.

David Lennox

minor

Also known as David, Davy Lennox

A young prisoner who befriends Paul.

Stubbs

minor

A servant at Llanabba Castle.

Peter Pastmaster

minor

Also known as Bobby Pastmaster, Bobby

A young aristocrat and friend of Paul's from Oxford.

Lord Circumference

minor

A local landowner and father of a Llanabba pupil.

Toby Cruttwell

minor

Also known as Toby

A drunken friend of Paul's from Oxford.

Mr. Sniggs

minor

Also known as Sniggs

A college dean at Scone College, Oxford.

Mr. Postlethwaite

minor

A schoolmaster at Llanabba.

Lord Pastmaster

minor

A deceased aristocrat, father of Peter Pastmaster.

Mrs. Roberts

minor

The landlady of Paul's lodgings in London.

Lord Parakeet

minor

Also known as Parakeet

A vapid young aristocrat in Margot's social circle.

Pamela Popham

minor

Also known as Pamela

A society girl who flirts with Paul.

Colonel MacAdder

minor

Also known as MacAdder

A prison officer at Blackstone Gaol.

Inspector Bruce

minor

A police inspector investigating Paul's case.

Mr. Partridge

minor

Also known as Partridge

A schoolmaster at Llanabba.

Margot Metroland

minor

A society hostess, possibly a different character from Margot Beste-Chetwynde.

Lord Rending

minor

Also known as Rending

A minor aristocrat in Margot's circle.

Lady Vanbrugh

minor

An elderly society figure.

Mr. Jack Spire

minor

Also known as Mr. Spire

A journalist who writes about Paul's case.

Augustus Fagan

minor

Dr. Fagan's son, mentioned but not seen.

Lord Utteridge

minor

Also known as Utteridge

A minor aristocrat.

Diana

minor

Also known as Miss Diana

A woman in Margot's social circle.

Gracie

minor

Also known as Miss Gracie

A maid at Llanabba Castle.

Miles Malpractice

minor

Also known as The Hon. Miles Malpractice

A young man about town.

Brolly

minor

A prison warder.

Mr. Levy

minor

A solicitor involved in Paul's legal affairs.

Jimmy Drage

minor

Also known as Jimmy

A young man in Margot's circle.

Percy

minor

A servant at Llanabba.

Bill

minor

A prisoner in Blackstone Gaol.

Briggs

minor

A prison warder.

Sanders

minor

Also known as Mr. Sanders

A schoolmaster at Llanabba.

Dina

minor

A woman mentioned in passing.

Scone

minor

A college butler at Oxford.

Bessy

minor

A maid at Llanabba.