Brideshead Revisited

The inspiration for a major film releasing 2008 starring Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon. A study of faith and disillusionment in a glamorous upper-class world, Waugh’s most famous novel is partly autobiographical and is a gripping multi-character-study of aristocratic life behind closed doors. Charles Ryder meets Sebastian, a member of the aristocratic Flyte family, at Oxford. He then begins to spend time at the family home, Brideshead, where he is welcomed into the fold and enjoys a decadent high-society lifestyle. Things start to unravel, however, when Charles notices the cracks in the veneer: his perception of the naivety of the family’s devotion to the Catholic faith, and his friend’s increasing drink habit. Tangled webs of love and obsession also threaten to break up the at first happy idyll. Examining the complexity of relationships and the strength of belief, ‘Brideshead Revisited’ is an intense listen and a riveting one.