The Foxglove Saga by Auberon Waugh (Chapman & Hall, 1960)

 

This rather slap-dash, silly novel is amusing -- it follows three English boys from their days at a Catholic prep school through their early adulthood, detailing their misadventures in both civilian and military life.  The most amusing character is Lady Julia Foxglove, one of the boys' mother, a beautiful and ostensibly pious and charitable woman who is actually a selfish and interfering monster.  Her ability to manipulate others under the guise of helping them is quite entertaining, but the satire and humor here is gentler and less trenchant then Eveyln Waugh's (the author's father), and the book seems correspondingly negligible.