IN his later years, a favorite accessory of English writer Evelyn Waugh, the celebrated satirist and author of Brideshead Revisited, was an ear trumpet.

Waugh, who reportedly had at least two of them, is said to have enjoyed playing up to the image of the grumpy elderly man of letters and used his ear trumpets to great effect in cultivating that persona and wielded them with relish. In one incident, it is reported that Lady Diana Cooper, a famously glamorous social figure, once became so exasperated with him that she poured a glass of champagne down his trumpet while it was at his ear.

Claud Cockburn, Waugh’s cousin, also recalled how Waugh