Illustration © Harry Brockway 2018 from The Folio Society edition of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Few novels contain quite such a menagerie of unforgettable characters. The novel is full of such brilliant literary creations – from the boorish Boy Mulcaster to the philistine Rex Mottram and Sebastian’s witty younger sister Cordelia, all of the characters, even when serving to make a satirical point on the author’s behalf (divorcee Mottram asks how much a blessing from the pope to remarry would cost – his answer to any problem to throw money at it) ring true and pepper the novel with a memorable supporting cast. “When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselves they are hating.” For such an incidental character, Clara speaks with great wisdom and truth, and is sketched economically, with skill and clarity, embodying the dignity of a woman who accepts her lot in life. That will make him very unhappy,” the observant Clara, Lord Marchmain’s mistress, points out during their seemingly idyllic trip to Venice to see Sebastian’s father. “Sebastian is in love with his own childhood.

Ryder is intoxicated, in more ways than one, but as he grows closer to Sebastian, and meets members of his family during visits to their home, Brideshead, he learns that there is a spreading darkness and a sadness within his friend that he is powerless to arrest. He soon ditches the studious friends he makes in his early weeks for the captivating and beautiful Sebastian Flyte, who carries his teddy bear Aloysius around with him, hangs out with a group of catty (mostly) homosexuals, and abandons the pursuit of academia for prowess in the consumption of liquor. For many, their student years are looked back upon with great fondness as hedonistic and boozy, and a time when great friendships were forged. Time flits back and forth between the ‘present’, the mid-1940s, in a world torn apart by conflict, and the period from the 1920s, from the moment narrator Charles Ryder heads to university for an encounter that will change his life.įew novels have so brilliantly encapsulated periods of life as Brideshead Revisited.

It looked back over a period that was vanishing – where gentry owned vast swathes of land, and enjoyed the privileges of wealth and titles, when dropping the family name was sufficient to secure a place at Oxford. The book first entranced readers at the end of the Second World War. Brideshead Revisited – the story of the aristocratic English Marchmain family reflected upon by a world- and war-weary outsider, Charles Ryder, is probably Evelyn Waugh’s most-celebrated and best-remembered novel.

Folio society brideshead revisited