Decline and Fall is the first novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel; an earlier attempt, titled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Partly, Decline and Fall is based on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College (Oxford), and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House, a former private school in north Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s.