Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Novels, Dark Academia, British Literature

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.”

In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an apprentice cabinet maker and journalist, he wrote and had published his first novel, “Decline and Fall” in 1928.

In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.

During the thirties Waugh produced one gem after another. From this decade come: “Vile Bodies” (1930), “Black Mischief” (1932), the incomparable “A Handful of Dust” (1934) and “Scoop” (1938). After the Second World War he published what is for many his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited,” in which his Catholicism took centre stage. “The Loved One” a scathing satire of the American death industry followed in 1947. After publishing his “Sword of Honour Trilogy” about his experiences in World War II - “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955), “Unconditional Surrender" (1961) - his career was seen to be on the wane. In fact, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1963) - his last published novel - received little critical or commercial attention.

Evelyn Waugh, considered by many to be the greatest satirical novelist of his day, died on 10 April 1966 at the age of 62.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_W...

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

********Please note - contains spoilers ************

One's head is rather spinning, there are so many terribly good things and likewise so very much abject wretchedness it's hard to begin. Let us try.

1) This book is the twisted story of a homosexual affair, which I was truly not expecting it to be. It's famously set amongst the upper classes, firstly in Oxford, so you get pages of blissed-out descriptions of life amongst British aristocratic students in the 1920s and how many plovers eggs they eat and which claret they guzzle. That part is what I was expecting, and very lush and delectable and appalling it is too. But what surprised me is that it all takes place within a thick pall of implied and overt homosexuality. The two principals of the first half, Charles and Sebastian, are in love, clearly. they do everything and go everywhere together. And the best character in the whole book is a Quentin Crisp-style flaming queer called Anthony Blanche who says things like

"Good evening Mulcaster, old sponge and toady, are you lurking amongst the hobbledehoys? Have you come to repay me the three hundred francs I lent you for the poor drab you picked up in the casino? It was a niggardly sum for her trouble, and WHAT a trouble, Mulcaster!"

and

"The gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat that I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys."

At one point Anthony takes our hero Charles to a gay club which Charles refers to as a "pansy bar". But here's the thing -

a) this novel is not notorious for its gay subject matter; it is true there is no explicit buggery going on, but neither is it especially coy. As it was published in 1945 when English men were being imprisoned for homosexuality (a crime which was only removed from the statutes in 1967, that year of liberation) this seems to me very interesting.

b) Nor in the book is there any trace of disapproval anywhere, from anyone, that homosexuality is wrong. The only sin which gets its religious comeuppance is adultery. From this book you would get the notion that the upper classes tolerated openly gay relationships in the 1920s and 1930s. This is surprising to me. It could be something to do with the public school system and the worship of classical Greece. It's all very queer.

2) This book appears to think its point is a religious one. So that the climactic sundering of the lovers in part two is because one of them is a passionate disbeliever and the other one realises that religion, by which we mean Catholicism, is genuinely important. As a confirmed "what's God got to do with it" agnostic, this washes right over my head but leaves me feeling damp and annoyed - I trudged through 330 pages for a stupid religious damp squib ending like that? Give me my money back! In the words of The Shangri-Las, "and that's called...bad".

3) this book is a love song to wealth and class, and as an only slightly reconstructed old class warrior, I was sailing on queasy seas, but could not help enjoying Waugh's tremendous atmospheric prose and beautiful dialogue. In the words of The Shangri-Las, "and that's called...glad".

4) This book presents us with one of my least favourite types of characters, the doomed agonised male with whom we are supposed to agonise along with and swoon over and indeed love. You get this creep popping up all over the place. He's there in The English Patient, he's there in that stupid movie Damage, he's there in Dead Man Walking, he's in la Belle dame Sans Merci, there's a million of them, all doomed, all with soulful eyes, all suffering. In the words of The Shangri-Las, "and that's called...sad".

5) This book appears to endorse some extraordinary behaviour. Charles gets married to someone who turns out not to be his true love at all, and has two kids, and goes off to paint in Guatemala for 2 years, and comes back, and his wife asks him to please come and visit his own children which he hasn't seen for 2 years and he regards this request as ... vulgar. And he just... doesn't see them! And no criticism from Waugh either! In the words of The Shangri-Las, "and that's called...mad".

So ultimately I don't really know what this book was really "about" but as a portrait of a set of upperclass bastards in England in the 1920s it's almost enthralling. Three and a half stars.

--------------

Note : Donna Tartt so ripped off part one of this book for The Secret History, with her languorous cliques of uber-rich students. She had more of a story going by page 100 I think, although that was a slowly crawling overfed turtle of a book too. But Evelyn Waugh is just a shade better at writing than our Donna.

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Brideshead Revisited' leaves a strange taste of bitterness unfinished. I have forgotten many details, but I do not forget that feeling.
A young man of common origin, of a somewhat shy nature, leaves to study at Oxford. Rather discreet, he does not integrate well into school life and leads a careful student contemplative life there - a "thriller," as we say in the infectious slang of engineering schools. By chance, he becomes friends with the "lion" - the school's most elegant, sought-after, and wealthiest young man, Lord Sebastian Flyte. During the holidays, he stays home and discovers his family, particularly his wise sister Julia. The months pass, the school years pass, and he has to face the facts: slowly, voluntarily, even stubbornly, the charming Sebastian is sinking into alcoholism.
Years later. The narrator is a married man, and Sébastian is a ruined man wandering somewhere. By chance, he meets Julia again. For her, he will divorce. But he will never marry her. Instead, the war will complete the dislocation of the remains of his youth.
Why does the charming Sebastian put so much effort into consciously and lucidly ruining his life? Is there love between Charles and Julia, or simple cooperation, a desire to gather the nostalgia they share for lost time? We will never really know.
I no longer remember many things from this book that I should reread. But I remember this feeling of melancholy, the narrator's painful and powerless misunderstanding in front of his best friend deliberately launched into a race to the bottom. These loves and these friendships never lead to anything; time takes care of erasing everything.

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our narrator, a non-Catholic officer based on the home front in World War II Britain, revisits a mansion he first visited as a young man and reflects back on his close relationship with a Catholic family. A non-Catholic himself, he reports to us about their habits and customs almost as if he were an anthropologist visiting a tribe in the tropical rainforest. Not only are Catholics a minority in Britain, but the Anglican Church is the official state-sponsored religion. It's a great book and, of course, it's been made into a Masterpiece Theater series years ago. There are many reviews of this work already, so just to illustrate the excellent writing, I will just say that I think the romantic episode on an ocean liner during a storm at sea (her husband is absent; his wife is laid up with seasickness) is the most romantic passage I can think of in literature.

[Schmacko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished rereading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, a book I pick up every couple of years or so. This time I read it because of the new movie version movie (the one with Emma Thompson as the Lady Marchmain Flyte). As a critic, I get to see a pre-screening of the new movie on Tuesday; I am taking Dr. Steve. Also, I am a huge fan of the original, very-literal British miniseries from 1981 (it is the first thing that brought Jeremy Irons to international attention, and it had the excessively handsome Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte.). I don’t know exactly when the new movie is coming out.

Speaking of coming out, it’s impossible to speak of Brideshead Revisited without talking about the strong homosexual themes. Then again, you also have to talk about the pressure of Catholicism and its attendant guilt. Finally, there is the sense of social climbing, of coveting and envy, that defines the story’s narrator, Charles Ryder.

The story is about an upper middle-class boy, Charles Ryder and his integration into a rich English family. After years at boarding school and summers with only his absent-minded and oblivious father as family, Charles meets Sebastian Flyte their third year at Oxford.

They immediately fall in love, though Sebastian pukes in Charles’ room.

Sebastian is described as a pretty young man, the son of uber-rich Catholic aristocracy. Sebastian throws wild parties for his obviously gay friends (there is no hemming about Sebastian’s friends being fairies), and gets drunk repeatedly. He travels to Venice and the Continent and generally lives an extremely privileged life.

He also carries around a teddy bear names Aloysius, which he speaks to as if it were a naughty child. He’s 19 and at college.

Sebastian and Charles start a thinly veiled romance – one that has been alternately argued to be sexual or simply a romantic phase by young men. Charles is taken in by Sebastian, his effete friends, and his rich lifestyle, and they are quite open with their affection toward each other. I personally think they have repeated sex, the references to their love for each other, the moments of nudity, and the open discussions of homosexuality are too numerous to ignore.

However, as Charles becomes more and more entrenched with the Flyte family, Sebastian grows bitter and drinks more. He tried to keep his life with Charles and his Catholic family separate. Sebastian possibly understands his romance with Charles is being taken over by his family. Perhaps Sebastian realizes his Catholic guilt will also kill his relationship with Charles. Slowly, Sebastian becomes a virulently self-destructive drunk, as the family communicates to Charles that they don’t mind their childish relationship, but that it is a phase that will need to pass. Charles also comes to understand the strength that the orthodox religion has on the family as he watches Sebastian slowly drink himself to death.

Over the course of the novel, Charles transfers his affections to Sebastian’s equally unattainable sister, Julia. Charles blatantly admits that he finds Julia and Sebastian very similar in looks and temperament. God knows, the family’s vast wealth and glamour are also draws for Charles; it’s as if Charles will do anything to be a part of the Flyte family. He is a bit of a cipher, a mirror, a quiet man who attracts people because they are able to project upon him exactly what they wish him to be. Charles is a fascinating, longing narrator – there is a bit of The Talented Mr. Ripley in his envy and in his personal blankness. He lusts after Sebastian’s life, but also after Sebastian as a great, flamboyant and handsome man.

However, there is such a sense of denigration from that first romance of Sebastian’s and Charles’, and it runs through the entire novel and even into Charles’ and Julia’s romance. The sense of lost innocence along with Sebastian’s deterioration from overdrinking is tragic. Charles admits that, in love, “Sebastian was the first;” he admits this openly to Julia and others. An entirely different sort of destruction happens in Charles’ and Julia’s romance. Both loves are assailed by Catholic guilt.

Charles is an agnostic. His lack of religious knowledge and his criticism of Catholic hypocrisy is at first one of the things that attracts Sebastian to him. But it’s also the thing that dooms Charles’ relationship with the family.

The mother, Lady Marchmain Flyte, is very pious – separated from her philandering husband (who lives with his mistress in Italy), but refusing to divorce the man for her Catholic beliefs. She is a strong and spiritual matriarch whose guilt and religiosity inspire hatred from her husband and children. Yet, Lady Marchmain doesn’t do anything particularly wrong, and there is a sense that she is an earthbound saint whose kin hate over their own deep senses of guilt – guilt over their own sins: their homosexuality, alcoholism, infidelity, and apostasy from the faith.

It’s a frustrating novel. I sense author Waugh’s latent homosexuality, and there is a strong sense of his gross envy of the travels and money and wondrous things and parties and balls of the upper class like his narrator Charles does. Finally, there is the strong sense of Catholicism. You could either say the religion and its guilt-ridden patterns doom the Flyte family. Or you could say that it is the only moral compass that these people have and that God is waiting to pull them back into His fold, even after their darkest sins and self-destruction.

The reclaiming of faith among the bourgeois and the over-privileged is the theme I think Waugh thought he was writing about. But there is a sense of such loss over their Bohemian innocence. And there is a palpable sense of guilt and shame that the Catholicism brings on – there doesn’t seem to be much mercy in Waugh’s God. Everything just slowly gets worse and sicker and more depressed. Perhaps that’s why I see the novel as a supreme and beautiful tragedy. Even though Charles comes to respect the spiritual belief and even attend to it some, I am still struck by the decay, the corrosion, the purification – of the beautiful house Brideshead and of its family, the Flytes.

As a gay man and being from a Catholic family (although the Flytes are wealthy and we are white trash), I love this book, even as it frustrates me.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Brideshead Revisited when at college and had only hazy memories of it. I remembered an endless summer, a palatial mansion, characters sitting around eating strawberries and drinking champagne, young Sebastian and his teddy bear, a deep friendship and all sorts of eccentric characters ......... but I couldn’t remember much about the plot.
Re-reading the novel, so many years later felt like reading a different book. It felt darker and more melancholy, much more concerned with the loss of innocence and ageing, of a changing world and things coming to an end. There’s a sense of fading elegance and that feeling of sadness you get when a holiday ends and reality is about to rush in (sorry, I’m rambling a bit :)
The book opens during WWII, as Charles Ryder, a captain in the British army, is moved with his battalion from their training camp in Scotland to billet in a new location. After travelling through the night and making camp in the dark they wake to find themselves in the grounds of a large, crumbling country house. Brideshead.

"Brideshead" spoken again: "a name that was so familiar to me, a conjuror's name of such magic power, that, at its ancient sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight".

Charles is overwhelmed with memory. He knows the house intimately and we travel back in time to see his younger self, and how he became so deeply entangled in the lives of the aristocratic Flyte family (whose ancestral seat now lays before him).
Charles meets Sebastian Flyte at Oxford university. Sebastian is a carefree, indolent and charming boy never without his teddy bear, Aloisious. They become inseparable and Charles gradually meets the eccentric members of the Flyte family, relationships that will determine the shape of his life.
With this reading I was much more aware of the various themes running through the novel and the ambiguous sexuality of the central characters.
Certainly there was love between Charles and Sebastian and this coloured Charles’s later relationship with Julia, Sebastian’s sister - but whether this was overtly homosexual will always be up for debate.
Evelyn Waugh skewers the snobbery, elitism, casual racism and the oddness of the upper class characters, and he examines the pervasive power of the Catholic Church on the Flyte family, a power that Charles, disastrously, never comes to terms with.
The first section of the book does have a a lighter, comic touch but this gradually gives way to the shadows of marriage breakdown, alcoholism, the impending war and death.
WWII marks the end of an era and cracks widen in the charmed lives of the aristocracy. Bankruptcy occurs for many and ancient houses are sold off for development or bulldozed. It’s fitting that Charles’s main profession is that of an architectural artist who specialises in painting buildings before they fall apart or are demolished.
Waugh writes elegantly with great wit, clever dialogue and although he often has a pen dipped in poison he does have deep sympathy for his characters. This ornate, lyrical novel is funny, thoughtful and quietly moving.
It’s a classic, and like one of Charles’s paintings, exquisitely captures a scene long gone.

[Maggie Stiefvater · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew very little about this novel (published in 1945, absurdly well known, adapted to miniseries the year I was born) going in, and what I did think I knew turned out to be wrong. It's funnier than I expected, which surprised me, and also more truthful than I expected, which pleases me. Mostly, I expected a class-based melodrama; instead, it is an often discomfiting portrait of a family, sometimes zoomed in to the most intimate and squirmy image, sometimes sprawled over a grueling and lengthy battlefield.

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Brideshead Revisited" is almost the opposite of Waugh's own "Vile Bodies"/"Bright Young Things" in that it starts off as a tragedy, or at least pretty damn close to E. M. Forster's "Maurice" terrain (thus tres tragique) and ends in such a jubilant & comedic form (sorry for this mega old spoiler). It seems to me that Waugh is a master of Contrasts, & it works all too well... the book ends & the reader is deeply disappointed that it does. I practically ignored most of Seattle as I read an old paperback version of this brilliant book.

It begins and ends at completely different sides of the spectrum: the Oxford years seem idyllic and maudlin, the protagonist has not yet been completely corrupted, though we do become witness to that voyage. The second part completely has Charles being both antagonist and sick voyeur. He does completely nothing to stop the decay around him which culminates, just as in "Vile Bodies", in WW2. All the bourgeois goes under... & the Oxford crowd is forever dismantled. It's drama, comedy, tragedy--all in one! Quite the accomplishment.

I will read this again. SOON

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

When I first started reading this book, I was puzzled, lost even in my effort to find what exactly the author was attempting. As time and pages passed, I grew horribly angry with it all, and wondered if I would be able to finish and review the story without a note of fury running through it and wrecking what analysis I could present. Now that I've finished, I find myself saddened by the entire experience. With that in mind, let me explain.

This story had a great deal of potential in it, oblique mentions of heartrending stories of religious guilt and tortured shame and individual souls beating themselves bloody on the walls of an uncaring sociocultural framework, and it is largely this potential that kept me going through pages of insipidly flat characters running around, trampling on everyone without the slightest attempt to understand their desires or care about the ones of others. To put it plainly, I loathed every single one of them, the narrator most of all, who made great friends with the one person whose storyline could have redeemed the entire book. Instead of caring the slightest bit for said 'friend', he wasted countless pages on selfish pursuits of 'love' and 'art' and philosophical meanderings that were the most pitifully idiotic things I have seen in a long time. Why is he alone? Why does life pass him by? What is beauty, history, and why has he been driven from Arcadia? Because he's an emotionally stunted git who makes friends and discovers passions and finds love and doesn't care about any of it, or if he does chooses to expound on it in the most unbelievable of ways, drawing upon learning and knowledge that are nothing more than out of character information dumps formatted in purple prose more laughably ridiculous than beautiful (excessive semicolons are not to everyone's taste).

And then I thought to myself, wait. It isn't just the narrator that suffers from this, but the entire cast of characters, the whole story even, a whole flat mess of caricatured nonsense that is trying to convey a message in the most contrived of methods. Which means only one thing. This is the author that is failing miserably at delivering, and there's no wonder why.

This is the kind of book that English classes would adore, or at least the teachers would, as while the work is not so great in itself, it is the perfect springboard for discussion of all matters of issues. Best of all, the flat characters that drown their passions in meaningless prattle, the obvious distinctions between when the author is droning out plot and when he is attempting to convey themes and meaning, the constant hints at powerful emotions of religious suffering, cultural decay, and sexual deviancy? All perfect material for discussions and essays, as there are barely any obvious overtones for the students could grasp at, a paltry amount of quotes for easy access to what teachers would consider to be "critical thinking". Chances are, this is what the author took away from the classroom, and these are the methodologies by which he chose to write his book.

It's disappointing, really, to see the effects of classroom indoctrination in something deemed a classic, which raises the question of what a "classic" really implies. I've read many that are certainly worthy of the title in my mind, novels that pushed and pulled at my sensibilities, opened my mind to gorgeous forms of prose and powerful emotional themes, changed my worldview countless times while managing to achieve the simple goals of making me laugh, cry, feel for characters that I will never truly know but find them as fascinatingly complex nonetheless, regardless of whether they inspire love or hatred. This book, though. It fulfills the aspects required for the average education well enough, and is worthwhile in its own way. But it could have been so much more, and the fact that it isn't is a tragedy in itself.

Back when I was still feeling angry with the story, I considered not reading the rest of the author's works that I have added. I've decided that I will, but not for a while, and only for the hope that he made some improvements. It's not his fault that the education concerning literature is not what it could be, and shows itself so plainly in his writing. I can only hope for improvement in the future.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

From one Sacred And Profane book (The Sacred and Profane Love Machine) to the next. Charles and Sebastian sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G--well, maybe not quite. Let's try this again: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me, he's just a poor boy from a poor--no, definitely not from a poor family. Sigh, how can anyone help but love little lost boy/spoiled brat/drunkard Sebastian Flyte? Has anyone tried giving him a good smack? There's perhaps no better argument in favor of corporal punishment. Although I have to admit, if his words are indeed like BUBBLES, I'll take them in the form of a bubble bath. But I guess I could settle for Anthony Blanche as a f-f-f-frenemy.

[emma]

there's just something about a classic written by a woman. except this is not one

[Piyangie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brideshead Revisited is a tragicomedy set in the in-between period of the First and Second World Wars. The story is centered on an aristocratic catholic family and their personal relationship with the main protagonist of the story - Charles Ryder. Charles's attachment to the family through Lord Sebastian Flyte begins at a difficult time for the Marchmain family, and he unwittingly entwines himself in their troubled and complicated lives and is never able to free him completely from that attachment.

The book revolves around two different storylines - one social and the other personal - both intertwined, and both revolve around the Marchmain family. The time marks the end of an era and the decline of aristocratic dominance. Marchmains too are facing this change. Their power and wealth are declining and their personal relationships tumultuous. They are no longer the future of Britain; their time of importance is at an end and new powers were emerging to dominate and dictate them. This co-storyline serves as the backdrop to the other more dominant and complex storyline - which is the personal relationships of the members of the Marchmain family. This is where the protagonist comes into the picture.

The Marchmain family is a complicated lot. And Charles's attachment with both Sebastian Flyte and Julia Flyte works both as negative and positive for him. His relationship with Sebastian, which can be interpreted in different ways, affects his life path. Sebastian's fall from Oxford also marks the end of Oxford to Charles. Yet, Bridehead - the country estate of the Marchmain family - where Charles frequents his youth as Sebastian's guest saves him. It inspires Charles to become an architectural painter; and a successful one at that. Years later, his romance with Julia takes a similar form to his relationship with her brother Sebastian. And yet again another Marchmain affects his life. Julia takes Charles away from his unhappy marriage only to end the affair in three years. All is not at an end, however, for Julia's parting gift - faith - helps the agnostic Charles to return to God.

Bridehead Revisited is truly Charles's revisiting of his life and not just his past. He recollects both his gains and losses, his achievements and mistakes. In a way, Charles's life is a tragedy, as are Sebastian's and Julia's. But they all find solace in their return to God. This I believe is what Waugh wanted to convey to the readers - this returning to God for comfort and peace and the ultimate salvation. However, this interpretation is something to be implied; Waugh doesn't help you there much with his characters.

This complex story, with its diverse and deep themes, is nostalgic and melancholic. It is the kind of story that the readers will feel deeply. But unfortunately, the characters didn't quite rise to the moment. They were unfeeling, detached, and self-absorbed for the most part. The inability to form a strong connection with the characters worked a bit negatively for me.

What attracted me most, however, is Evelyn Waugh's beautiful prose; it is both poetic and metaphoric. It captures the nostalgic and melancholic tone of the story quite elegantly. It is certainly his forte. This is my first reading of a work by him, and I'm simply blown by his writing. It is incredibly beautiful.

Overall, I did enjoy the story despite my disappointment with the ending. And I certainly enjoyed his writing. To say that I enjoyed Waugh's poetic prose more than the story itself is no exaggeration.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative and nostalgic tale, infused with religion and (homo)sexuality, and hence passion, betrayal and guilt.

The later part, about Charles and Celia and then Charles and Julia is more subtle, realistic and sad than the light frivolity of Oxford days.

Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child" has many echoes of this (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...).


It's five years since I last read this, but a few ideas that have come back to me by discussing it elsewhere:

SEGREGATION
People were strongly segregated by class and gender in those days. Not only were the schools (at least, the sort that Charles and Sebastian attended) single-sex, so were the colleges at university. The fact that people of their background were invariably packed off to boarding school from the age of 7 or 8, not returning until the holidays, created segregation from their parents as well. And of course there weren't many scholarship boys to broaden the social mix.

HOMOSEXUALITY
When I first read the book as a naive teenager, I thought the book was somewhat ambiguous about Charles and Sebastian's relationship. As an adult, I have no doubt that it was sexual, but that although Sebastian is gay, Charles is towards the straight end of bisexual: his attraction, nay obsession, is more with the Marchmain family than any individual member of it. Lady Marchmain is mostly in the shadows, but she's always pulling the strings - until Charles tangles everything.

Naked male friends sunbathing may seem very gay nowadays, but was less so for Charles and Sebastian in Oxford. Nudism and "health and efficiency" were popular at the time, and there was nothing inherently gay about it. Kafka was a straight man of the period who was an enthusiast.

Also, as recently as the early 1980s there was a men-only nudist club on the banks of the river in central Oxford, (in)famously frequented by dons (professors) and clergy. It may still be there, though if so, it might be mixed sex, as the colleges themselves are. If you want to Google it, it was (is?) called Parsons' Pleasure!

ALOYSIUS
Sebastian takes his teddy bear to Oxford and treats him as a living pet. Although his presence clearly signals a certain immaturity, I suspect that in Sebastian's mind it was at least as much a deliberate ploy to be seen as appealingly eccentric.

Apparently this element is based on John Betjeman taking his bear, Archibald Ormsby-Gore, to Oxford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibal...).

CATHOLICISM
To me, the Church is portrayed pretty negatively, yet some Catholics see it in a more positive light, and Waugh himself converted. I'm not sure whether that reflects a strength or a weakness in Waugh's writing.

Even so, how is this for biting satire, when Lady Marchmain is talking to Charles about her wealth and the perception that wealth can interfere with following Christ:

"It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that is is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included."
(Book 1, Chapter V, p. 113)

BRIDESHEAD, OXFORD AND ME
I have many fond associations with this book: I was at secondary school in Oxford (a single-sex school, where I was a boarder), so know the city well, and something of communal, single-sex living. I first read the book and also saw the excellent Granada TV adaptation at that time, and had a bit of a crush on Anthony Andrews (who played Sebastian).

2008 FILM
Whereas the TV series was obsessively faithful to the book, the 2008 film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412536/) changed the plot significantly. The timeline differed, Julia was more prominent, and there was much more time in Venice.

To my surprise, once I let go of expectations of it being close to the book, I really enjoyed it.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this excellent book weeks ago but I have been stuck on how to review it. I sometimes have problems writing about the books I really like, and I loved this novel. I was familiar with the plot having seen the 2008 movie, but I didn't expect to love the book as much as I did or to get so completely immersed in the story.

I even loved the names of the characters: Charles Ryder. Sebastian Flyte. Julia Flyte. Lady Marchmain. I was caught up in each person — I felt Charles' yearning, I understood Sebastian's angst, I admired Julia's sass, and I pitied Lady Marchmain's self-righteousness.

There is so much brilliant writing in this novel. Some of my favorite scenes were that first summer with Charles and Sebastian at Brideshead; the comical dinner conversations with Charles' father, who was being deliberately obtuse; the bumblings of Rex Mottram; the lectures from Charles' cousin, Jasper; and the lively conversations with Anthony Blanche.

I listened to this on audio, narrated by Jeremy Irons, and it was a superfantasticamazing performance. If you like audio books, I highly recommend seeking out that version.

One of my goals is to read more modern classics, and the richness of this novel shows it is definitely worth the effort.

Favorite Quotes
“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”

“If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.”

“But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”

“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”

[Violet wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy of this begins with a rather baffling preface from Evelyn Waugh. He tells us the theme of this novel is the operation of divine grace on a closely connected set of characters and that perhaps it was an overly ambitious theme. This forced me to ask the question whether an author can be misguided about the theme of his own book. Because religion is a decorative leitmotif in this book rather than its theme. Really this book is an elegiac celebration of the English aristocracy written during the second world war when Waugh believed he was writing about a gilded world that was about to vanish. In other words it's a kind of fantasy and therein resides all its immense enchantment. It's also a wonderful dramatization of something most of us have experienced, often in childhood - the allure of a family to which we don't belong but in moments of fantasy would like to.

Waugh then goes on to apologise for how overwritten this book is. We're accustomed to authors apologising for youthful early works - I'd understand him apologising for the somewhat puerile and vicious A Handful of Dust - but not for a novel written at the peak of his powers and especially not for a novel posterity has revealed to be by far the most well-loved of his books. But he's right; there are many passages that are wildly overwritten. Many years ago, a TV series was made of Brideshead. It's my favourite filmed adaptation of any novel. The casting for example could not have been more inspired. The cinematography is stunning. But what struck me while reading this was how brilliantly they edited this novel for that series. It's twelve hours long so contains much of the novel's prose but every overwritten passage was excised. It's a masterclass of brilliant editing, a skill which has all but vanished from our world. Editing nowadays seems little more than spellchecking.

The best way to experience Brideshead Revisited is therefore to watch the Granada TV series starring Jeremy Irons, Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud and set at Castle Howard, one of the most beautiful English stately homes. (The pointless, ham-fisted and trite BBC version by comparison is another example of how cinema can cheapen or even desecrate a novel.)

[Emma Angeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

It starts like a warm glorious summer and then slowly becomes a cold quiet winter
I miss Sebastian
He deserved better

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Debo decir que siento debilidad por la elegancia, la ironía, el sentido del humor y la mala leche que es frecuente encontrar en las obras de escritores ingleses en las que retratan a su aristocracia y la adaptación a la nueva realidad social que tuvieron forzosamente que emprender durante todo el siglo pasado. Esta novela es una de ellas. La famosa flema inglesa, el decoro por encima de todo, tragedias incluidas, es algo que me fascina y me repele a un tiempo. Lástima del gran pero que para mí tiene el relato.

Alguien dijo una vez que la religión es como el vino, hay a quien le sienta bien y a quien le sienta mal. En esta novela asistimos al segundo caso... al menos eso me pareció durante gran parte de la novela. Sin embargo, el final lo cambia todo, tanto lo cambia que me parece un gran lastre para la novela. El autor justifica todo lo acaecido a los personajes (nada bueno, por cierto) en aras de una religiosidad que pone por encima de todo (hay que recordar la crisis religiosa del autor, que ya mayorcito se convirtió al catolicismo).

En fin. Aún así creo que es una gran novela que cuenta con maravillosos personajes secundarios, como el primogénito Brideshead, el "gusano" Samgrass, el arribista Rex o "la loca" Anthony, cuyos diálogos me parecen extraordinarios. Pena de ese final.

[Susan's Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this one years ago. I remember thinking, after reading this book, that the British were really too hung up on religion. Charles Ryder was an atheist at heart, but became a Catholic later on (more, I believe, because of his hopeless love for Julia Marchmain than because of any real religious fervour). Charles was enchanted by Sebastian's dramatics, his eccentric lifestyle and all of the beautiful things he surrounded himself with. Sebastian's biggest flaw was his heavy drinking, which he blamed on his strictly religious mother and her constant attempts to control him.



I suspected that Charles wished he could trade places with Sebastian and envied him his exotic life. But ironically, Sebastian ends up in self-imposed exile in a leper colony in Africa at the finish of the novel. Julia is trapped by her religion in her loveless marriage to a high ranking politician, and Charles is unhappy in his own marriage with Celia. Everyone in this novel appeared, at first, to be willing to be ready to give everything up for love, but they all ended up finding that their social roles, their religious upbringing - or whatever!- prevented them from choosing personal happiness over their social or religious obligations.



I remember wondering if Charles ever regretted meeting Sebastian at Oxford, but then Charles himself said that life really only began for him at Oxford AFTER he met Charles. All those poor, discontented people! I enjoyed this novel very much, but kept pitying all the poor choices that these characters made - or felt forced to settle for.



N.B. I find it interesting that Waugh later regretted writing this novel. In a letter to another author, he wrote:

""I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled......
It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster – the period of soya beans and Basic English – and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language which now, with a full stomach, I find distasteful."

Well, the rest of the literary world might beg to differ!
(I found this quote quite humorous - it reminded me of when I recently I found an old copy of my high school year book and cringed at my awful, melodramatic submissions of poetry that had been published there - Yikes!)

(There is an excellent 1981 Granada Television series staring Jeremy Irons which did a great job of adapting this novel into a series. I haven't seen the 2008 adaptation. Not sure anything can top the 1981 adaptation.)

[persephone ☾]

did i just add this book to my tbr solely because i saw a poster of it in Charlie's (from the heartstopper series) bedroom ? yeah, absolutely. anything for my favorite gays

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 1 out of 5]

My god, that was boring! Nothing else to say.

[Glenn Sumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as Charles Ryder is seduced by the aristocratic Marchmain family in Brideshead Revisited, I was seduced by Evelyn Waugh’s gorgeous prose, elegy to lost youth and dreams, and the glamorous between the wars setting.

The pacing is strange, but it’s hinted at in the subtitle: “The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.” Memories are sporadic, apt to be uncomprehensive, subjective.

Ryder, an officer (“homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless”), is stationed at the magnificent Brideshead estate, and looks back on how his life has intertwined with many of its members – first the fey, teddy bear-clutching Sebastian, at Oxford, and then, later, with Sebastian’s sister Julia.

The family is presided over by the understated but quietly manipulative Lady Marchmain – a terrifying portrait – and gradually Charles learns about all the skeletons rattling away in the family’s enormous closets. He also comprehends what role the devout grand dame wants him to play in helping save Sebastian from a life of drink and debauchery.

I know Waugh is best known as a razor sharp satirist, and there are many funny passages and descriptions in this book. (Ryder’s father, for one, is a hoot.) But this is a serious book about big issues: faith, desire, class, loyalty.

I had watched the excellent Granada miniseries, so there were few narrative surprises. But Waugh’s prose lived up to its reputation. It’s sophisticated without being pedantic; lyrical without being fussy.

And although I knew it was coming, the deathbed scene with Lord Marchmain, a garrulous old man who’s lived outside the Catholic faith for decades, had me on the proverbial edge of my seat.

I find it fascinating that Waugh converted to Catholicism later in life. Recent biographies have hinted that he may have been a latent, or not so latent, homosexual. I wonder if these things were related.

Many readers get hung up about Charles’s relationship with Sebastian. Was it sexual? There’s this passage:

Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.

I love that impish word, “naughtiness,” especially when contrasted with the sombre “catalogue of grave sins.”

Certainly there are gay characters in the book, including the fascinating figure of Anthony Blanche, a flamboyant Wildean character who warns Charles early on about the Marchmains (and he’s pretty accurate).

I should add that I read the revised version of the text, with some additions and, apparently, many cuts of florid, overwritten passages.

I’m looking forward to reading more Waugh. Based on this book, I could happily, naughtily, become a convert.

[Metodi Markov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Модерна класика, чете се леко и с удоволствие, но дава дълбоки теми за размисъл. Много ми хареса!

Трагедия и невъзможна любов бележат за капитан Райдър пропадането и отмирането на епоха, съвпаднала със залиняването на собствените му младежки пориви и идеали. Меланхолията е чувство поразяващо самотно.

В Брайдсхед на щастието, на първото нежно юношеско приятелство и на безгрижните летни дни на младостта е просто невъзможно да се завърнеш…

Отличен Уо!

Цитати:

"Бих искал да заровя нещо скъпоценно на всяко място, в което съм бил щастлив и когато остарея, погрознея и озлочестя, да се връщам, да го изравям и да си спомням."

"Пази се от английските католици — всички са содомити и простаци."

"Когато хората мразят с такава сила, те мразят нещо у себе си."

"Когато кладенците пресъхнат, хората търсят да пият от миражи."

"Английският снобизъм е за мен по-зловещ дори от английския морал."

P.S. Навремето британски сериал по този роман имаше голям успех в България. Ролята на капитан Райдър бе поверена на великия Джеръми Айрънс.

[Dem · Rating 1 out of 5]

A laborious read that didn't hold my attention and became more of a chore than a pleasure therefore 30 % through I made decision that this modern classic just didn't fit me.

I have learned after many years of reading that its OK not to like a book that others have loved.

I download this on Audio and was quite excited when as it was narrated by Jeremy Irons and from the very first chapter I just couldn't warn to his narration and found this a slow moving and overly dramatic audio book. I didn't connect with any of the characters and just found them way too pompous. While the writing may be rich the plot was slow and tedious. I felt myself tuning out on quite a few occasions and figured I had listened to enough to know that this wasn't a book that was going to "bring me Joy".

I parted company with the audio about 30% in and am so glad that Audible.com offer the listener the opportunity to return books that don't suit them.

So many of my Goodread friends have loved this novel but for me it was one star audible experience and reflects my reaction to the novel.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read October 2023

This is such a complex piece of literature and my feelings about it are all over the place. Having read it at least twice before, starting from when I was an undergrad, I have become increasingly resistant to Waugh's wannabe vision of the so-called gilded aristocracy: their wealth, their cavalier behaviour (think Fitzgerald's 'careless people' from The Great Gatsby), their unpleasant and dangerous drunkeness (Sebastian nearly killing people by driving drunk on the wrong side of the road - Fitzgerald, again, uses this scene to more pointed moral purpose in his fiction) and their self-serving politics and religion.

Waugh, famously, claimed that the book's theme was the working out of what he termed divine grace, and while there is a Catholic idea that threads through the narrative - from the fates of Sebastian and Cordelia to the death-bed confession of Lord Marchmain - it's all imbued with a kind of doomed glamour that echoes the passing of the age of the 'great house' - something which the book seems to mourn but which I cannot.

Sandwiched between the scenes where Charles, now Captain Ryder during WW2, comes upon Brideshead with his party of implicitly working class soldiers, the house is made a stand-in for all those 'English' values that define the Establishment: class, wealth, a self-indulgent and leisured life propped up by an invisible horde of servants, empire, public school, Oxbridge, excellent wines and plovers eggs.

But, but, the book is more complex, I think, than simply an encomium to a so-called 'lost' world (though a quick look at the UK's current Tory government should put that idea to rest). For the survivor, if I can put it that way, isn't the scions of the Marchmains, but Charles Ryder, the interloper - at least partly representing Waugh himself who came from a solidly middle-class background with a home of which he was ashamed: a solid semi in Golders Green! Julia ends up with Rex Mottram, once a praiser of Hitler, now a member of the war government - clearly a man with no principles other than his own self-interest. Bridey is snapped up by a parvenu whom everyone despises, and Sebastian and Cordelia never marry.

There is, of course, Waugh's gorgeous writing but even that failed to seduce me completely this time. Once amused at Sebastian's antics at Oxford, I now feel for the invisible and unacknowledged people who have to clean up after his drunken revels. And while the beauty of Brideshead itself is piercingly felt, the reality is that those 'big houses' and the people who owned and lived in them are not of a type that would have ever welcomed someone like me - other than, perhaps, as a servant! The elegiac loss that this book expresses so movingly, is actually a lament for a society, a class and a whole mode of life that is exploitative, opportunistic, prejudiced, and sickening - and one from which many readers would have been excluded.

I can still appreciate the way Waugh's writing creates such an atmosphere of sublime loss, not least in the relationship between Charles and Julia. But I'm an acutely resistant reader to the underlying rhetoric and political vision which is profoundly and unrepentantly conservative.

3.5 stars, rounded down for the way I felt manipulated to be on the side of snobbery and elitism.
------------------------------------------------
The first time I read this I was, as most people are, I think, utterly charmed by Sebastian Flyte and the sunny Oxford chapters. On this re-read, I found those youthful scenes mildly irritating and appreciated more the way they are recalled, in Proustian fashion, from Charles' memory. The point I think I'm making is that this is a novel which shifts and mutates depending on our perspective.

For me in the present, it's the elegiac, doomed love affair between Charles and Julia which haunts the heart of the book, hedged by the fates of Cordelia and Sebastian.

Waugh's writing is sensitive and versatile, skipping between comedy, satire, and a sense of sublime beauty and loss. As someone who has struggled with Graham Greene's Catholic novels, Waugh's engagement with questions of sin and faith feel natural here even to a reader without religion, and the conflicts seem to belong to the book and characters rather than warping them out of shape as I feel is the case in Greene's The End of the Affair.

There are moments where the story feels episodic and not quite clearly coherent but this remains a seductive book, flaws and all.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARISTOPORN

This was a reread – I wanted to straighten out my thoughts on this peculiar novel. But the rereading did not work! I’m still perplexed!

It’s about aristocratic Catholics. According to Sebastian Flyte, Catholics :

have an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people.

This might be my problem – Evelyn Waugh just doesn’t bother explaining why things happen. If you’re a Catholic you’ll know why Julia has a meltdown and decides it’s impossible after all to marry Charles (I can only guess that even though she’s divorced she suddenly remembers she doesn’t believe in divorce), and you’ll understand the whole shenanigans with the long long long deathbed scene in which Lord Marchmain, doughty disbeliever, a Catholic who lapsed 25 times before breakfast, sinking into the oblivion of Death, way past being able to talk, his pious family surrounding him and praying like billy-o for his eternal soul, suddenly does something weird :

Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead... the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross.

This has an electrifying effect on all present. It’s like a holy GOTCHA moment. I couldn’t buy it. I mean, what the what?

The critic Edmund Wilson said :

his cult of the high nobility is allowed to become so rapturous and solemn that it finally gives the impression of being the only real religion in the book.

DID BOB DYLAN READ BRIDESHEAD REVISITED IN 1963?

Page 147 :

I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said we shouldn’t try and criticize what we didn’t understand.

The Times they Are A-Changin’ :

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand

A LOVE SONG TO DOOMED ARISTOCRATS, ONE IN PARTICULAR

So as you probably know we are in 1920s Oxford University with all its autumnal spires and leafiness. And boy meets boy, as will often happen.
Charles and Sebastian are very close, to the point where some people make certain assumptions :

Two girls stopped near our table and looked at us curiously. “Come on,” said one to the other, “we’re wasting our time. They’re only fairies.”

First Charles our fairly posh but not aristocratic young protagonist falls in love with Oxford and being at Oxford, then he falls in love with Sebastian, then he falls in love with Sebastian’s family, then he falls in love with Brideshead, the stately pile they live in.

The plot sort of says that young men are allowed to spend their golden youth romping with each other and lunching on plovers eggs and glugging the right sort of champers and never having to think about where the money is coming from but when they graduate they are to find the right girl and settle right down and produce offspring with the correct attitudes who will grow up to become more Jenga-style planks in the tottering tower of the British class system. And that is what Charles does. He puts away his apparent homosexuality, straightens up and gets married. And has two children who he then totally ignores.

A STRANGE BOOK

Evelyn Waugh started out writing brilliant funny comedies – Decline and Fall, Scoop, Vile Bodies – but this one was a sudden turn into Seriousness. (Although he can’t help throwing in some wonderful comedy too, it’s not all drooping towards an early grave, not when the best character of all Anthony Blanche hoves into view. There should have been a spinoff.)

But mostly it is like Evelyn Waugh thought he was writing a beautiful nostalgic encomium to a crumbling fading way of life whereas actually he was writing an indictment.

Well, if you wish, you can read Brideshead Revisited as straight aristoporn, like Downton Abbey. It works on both levels. But the big religious finale was like a big wrecking ball smashing the whole thing to bits. Crazy stuff, and not a trace of Miley Cyrus.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

god bless twinks

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This classic is standing the test of time!

It’s also the 75th anniversary of this well-loved classic novel, and Little Brown has been hosting a readalong to coincide with this stunning special edition commemorating the anniversary. I’d not read Brideshead Revisited prior. It reminds me of Downton Abbey with its English manor home and wide cast of characters; some endearing, some less so, but all of them are complex and well-written.

I found it an interesting and compelling story, definitely worthy of its rating on Goodreads and all the big love over the last 75 years. I want to read more books by Evelyn Waugh now!

I received a gifted copy.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two totally separate, virtually unrelated books with over-the-top narration and no arc. Brideshead Revisited is divided into two books that take place ten years apart from each other. The narrator/main character is almost unrecognizable from one to the other, and no real explanation is given. Is a simpering fool in the first book, and a cold jerk in the second. His main obsession in the first book is almost entirely and perfunctorily absent from the second, and vice versa with his obsession from the second.
The writing is laughably intense and painfully overworked. This can work as a device to indicate an important trait of the first person narrator (see Lolita), but here it was clearly Waugh talking and not Ryder.
Most annoyingly the climax revolves around a character that is hardly in any other part of the book and the final confrontation between the two main characters limps uninterestingly and flacidly to a point that likely didn't need making.
I understand this is one of the best books ever written. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe the portrayal of life at the time is incredibly accurate and probing. Maybe the way he weaves his absurdly overdrawn paragraphs is seen as revolutionary and impressive. Maybe his ability to make his characters change without any explanation or without making the reader care was thought to be one-of-a-kind.
Whatever, critics.

[Sana · Rating 4 out of 5]

گاهی اوقات احساس می کنم که گذشته و آینده به قدری محکم از دو طرف فشار وارد می کنند که هیچ جایی برای زمان حال باقی نمی ماند. 

یکی از قشنگترین کلاسیک‌هایی که اخیرا خوندم.

[Lauren G · Rating 5 out of 5]

'"Light one for me, would you?"
It was the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me, and as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers, I caught a thin bat's squeak of sexuality, inaudible to anyone but me.'

This book hit me, hard. I read it for a course in 'Catholic Literature' which was an excuse for my favorite professor to teach a small group of students about his all-time favorite books. He made up the name so he could teach it as a theology/literature course.

We read Brideshead, then watched the film version with Jeremy Irons. Growing up immersed in an Anglophile household, I was amazed i'd waited too long to read this masterpiece. I felt their hearts beating in my chest, their losses and gains in love and life my own, and wept for the friendships within these pages (I was 20 when I read it, so, cut some slack). I reread it frequently. It never leaves my side.

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reread of Waugh’s love letter to Oxford confirms that time only deepens its melancholic disquiet and aching sense of loss.

A masterpiece still.