After the trauma of the Great War of 1914-18, Evelyn Waugh, similarly to the leading intellectuals of the period, was searching for an alternative frame of reference on the basis of which he would be able to define himself in the new and chaotic world. In 1930 he converted to Catholicism, a religion which was to become a dominant theme in his later novels. In my thesis I attempt to prove that Waugh’s gradual turn towards Catholicism was mainly the result of his alienation from and loss of faith in the English upper class tradition which, especially in terms of morality, had long been considered exemplary, and provided a sense of stability and continuity even for the lower classes. I am going to illustrate this process with the help of three of his novels, namely Decline and Fall (1928), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Brideshead Revisited (1938).