He was a chain-smoker of big cigars and drank at least one bottle of wine with meals per day, as well as spirits. He took very little exercise. His doctors often warned him about his life-style, but he ignored them. On Easter Sunday, 1966, he returned home from church with his family and excused himself to visit the lavatory. Whilst there, he suffered an instantaneously fatal heart attack. His friend
Graham Greene later wryly remarked that the circumstances of his death combined the spiritual and comic aspects of his writing - the spirituality indicated by its date, and the comedy by its location.
