Foreign Minister Boris Johnson cites Evelyn Waugh in a recent speech in Sydney, Australia. In explaining the basis for Britain’s exit from the EU, he is reported as saying this:
Joining ASEAN and such forums, he insisted, was far better than being part of a bloc of states governed by EU strictures. The club fees for the former, he surmised, were far cheaper. Besides, Britain wanted to, as Evelyn Waugh might have said, project its might, notably through the deployment of two aircraft carriers in the South China sea and through the Straits of Malacca.
This is not a quote but comes from a story by Binoy Kampark in International Policy Digest. I can’t recall where Waugh may have commented on a nation protecting its might or why, but it may have been in connection with his writings about Africa or Mexico. The story goes on to comment on this part of the speech:
Boris would also have you believe that those aircraft carriers actually existed, yet these, he had to concede, had yet to be constructed.