1066 and all that? History in Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion

[Extract] Reviewing the American Edition of Edmund Campion for the New Yorker in 1946, Edmund Wilson, the eminent\ud novelist and critic, wrote: "Waugh's version of history is in its main lines more or less in the vein of 1066 And All That. Catholicism was a Good Thing and Protestantism was a Bad Thing, and that is all that needs to be said about it."[2] Strangely, Wilson went on to accuse Edmund Campion of making "no attempt to create historical atmosphere"; and\ud this of a biography that offends, where it offends, by locating its central biographical narrative within a boldly\ud tendentious—and atmospheric—version of Elizabethan history. Despite this opening, which seems to promise a discussion of Waugh's history in the broad, the following modest essay will concern itself mainly with slips and blunders, primarily because one noted Campion scholar virtually defines Waugh's Edmund Campion by its "irritating\ud historical errors."[3] But it is fair to ask how numerous, and how significant, such errors really are, and why they have been given such notoriety. Is Waugh's history really "in the vein of 1066 And All That"