Put Out More Flags

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Put Out More Flags

First edition
Author	Evelyn Waugh
Language	English
Publisher	Chapman and Hall
Publication date	1942
Publication place	United Kingdom
Preceded by	Scoop
Followed by	Brideshead Revisited

Put Out More Flags, the sixth novel by Evelyn Waugh, was first published by Chapman and Hall in 1942. The title comes from the saying of an anonymous Chinese sage, quoted and translated by Lin Yutang in The Importance of Living (1937):

A man getting drunk at a farewell party should strike a musical tone, in order to strengthen his spirit … and a drunk military man should order gallons and put out more flags in order to increase his military splendour.

Dedicated to Randolph Churchill, who found a service commission for Waugh during the Second World War, the story is set in the first year of the war.

It follows the activities of a cast of mostly upper-class British characters, some of them reintroduced from Waugh's earlier satirical novels Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and Black Mischief. Facing first the dormant conflict of the Phoney War and then the cataclysmic events of 1940, peacetime lives of boredom and frivolity give way to a sense of purpose and solidarity.