Stuart Preston was one of the more curious figures of London during the Second World War, the U.S. Army Sergeant who featured in James Lees-Milne’s and Maud Russell’s wartime diaries and inspired “the Loot,” Lieutenant Padfield, in Evelyn Waugh’s Unconditional Surrender (retitled The End of the Battle in America), the last and best volume of Waugh’s war trilogy. Until leaving in July 1944 to take part in the liberation of France, Stuart lived in the U.S. Army Headquarters, conveniently located in North Audley Street, only minutes away from Heywood Hill’s bookshop on Curzon Street, where Nancy Mitford and Bridget Parsons were holding the fort, and the Dorchester, where Emerald Cunard continued to host parties. An eager, well-informed American, he was enraptured with everything Edwardian. In the 1940s, there were still survivors of the period, and Stuart, notwithstanding his duties, traveled the country to stay with Lady Desborough and Maurice Baring. Like Kilroy, the “Sarge” was always there, in his case at every literary or social party in London, ever amiable and unassumingly knowledgeable, even if Emerald Cunard, herself American-born, complained to Harold Acton that he never said anything memorable and was too educated to be a Sergeant. His legend even reached George VI’s ears. “Oh, never mind. I daresay you’ve been to see the Sergeant,” the king said when an aide arrived late. The “ample leisure” mentioned by Waugh with regard to the Loot may have had something to do with Preston’s possible position in