Brideshead Revisited

The author, Waugh, is a moral and ethical guy from everything I’ve read about him. I recall my wife watch ing Brideshead on PBS a many years ago so I finally picked up the book and started reading it. I got to about page 55 and began to see where the main character’s life was heading, ie, a wet relationship with a man. That was it…I threw it in the trash. The book held my attention buy I have no desire to read about that perverse junk. If you like and encourage homosexuality you will probably enjoy this book. The reason I was taken by surprise about the theme was that I knew the book was written in the 40s and I (wrongly) assumed that the perverse subject would not rate an 11-part miniseries in the 80s.

This version of Brideshead Revisited written by Evelyn Waugh is the audiobook which is read by Jeremy Irons. I have tried to locate this version for years without luck. Then by chance I located it in a library in Calgary USA. In the UK it’s just impossible to find. If you know Brideshead you will love Jeremy’s reading of it. He strikes the perfect balance in his speech pattern and is able to convey disdain, surprise, cordiality and love. For me after all these years since watching it first on Granada TV back in the early eighties and having the DVD’s of both the original and the Ben Whishaw version it was like hearing the voice of an old friend. Oddly I only read the book after seeing the Granada series and have re-read it countless times since, my dog-eared copy is well thumbed. To hear Jeremy read it, is like opening a time capsule, it takes me back to those bleak austere days of the three day week, power cuts, and wild-cat strikes. The enunciation, clarity of speech and impeccable diction will leave you reeling. I always find some new word to research when re-reading Brideshead and listening to Jeremy corrects my mispronunciation of Latin. If you have not heard this you are missing out. John M P.S. Hope this helps you decide.

This is the best known of Evelyn Waugh’s novels where he displays his affection for the English aristocracy and his fascination with the Catholic faith. The narrator is an architectural painter Charles Ryder who becomes close friends at Oxford with Sebastian Flyte, son of a Marquess. Ryder, an agnostic, is taken to visit Brideshead which Sebastian describes as where his family lives rather than as his home. Ryder becomes well acquainted with the entire family at Brideshead and with Sebastian’s absent father, Lord Marchmain who lives in Italy. Sebastian is a flamboyant homosexual who is loved but at the same time estranged from his family. Sebastian correctly believes that his mother is trying to enlist Ryder to bring Sebastian back into the fold and to try to control Sebastian’s drinking. This causes strain in Ryder’s relationship with Sebastian as does Ryder’s romantic attentions to Sebastion’s sister Julia. A central theme of the book is the struggle Ryder has in understanding the Catholic faith of the family at Brideshead. Making the narrator an architectural painter was very appropriate for Waugh’s style of writing–only a painter could see and describe so evocatively the beauty of the landscape, interior decoration and magnificence of the architecture at Brideshead.The book was made into a great British TV mini-series and into a not very well done movie. The movie places too much emphasis on a homosexual relationship between Sebastian and Ryder. This relationship is not explicitly described in the book and is in no sense a central theme of the novel. Indeed, while Sebastian is described throughout the book as a flamboyant homosexual, Ryder clearly has interests in women much to the annoyance of Sebastian.

It’s amazing that it took so many hours for this short book to be dramatized by the BBC. But reading “Brideshead Revisited” for a second time, I once again appreciated what a great writer Evelyn Waugh was. Vividly drawn characters and locations portrayed through its narrator’s remembrances make “Brideshead” a rich reading experience.

There’s not much action, for readers who look for that. There are tight but dense descriptions of an era that was like a languorous fairy tale for young Charles Ryder, who narrates the story after his youthful sense of awe has been overshadowed by the cynicism of wartime. What we as readers can dwell on at our leisure isn’t rushed by the BBC dramatization (which I highly recommend as an example of a nearly perfect adaptation of a novel), giving Waugh’s characters and story a treatment appropriate to the medium.

Read the book, above all. But then set aside lots of hours to watch perhaps the best adaptation of a book ever.

Long before “Downtown Abbey,” there was “Brideshead Revisited,” a classic work by Evelyn Waugh that perfectly captures the spirit of the times between the two world wars as the British aristocracy started losing hold of their place in the world.

Charles Ryder narrates the story in the first person, looking back on his life, beginning with his time as a student at Oxford. There he meets the handsome, rich Sebastian Flyte, an incessant party boy who grew up at Brideshead and is having a difficult time finding his way in the world. Sebastian takes Charles to Brideshead, and it isn’t long before the Flyte family accepts Charles as one of their own.

The story is really rather simple, but it is the vividly-drawn characters and underlying themes of family, love, death and religion that make the book complex and multilayered. (Note: The first chapter is a little slow-going. Keep at it! It quickly picks up after that.)

Beautifully written, this is an imaginative and evocative tribute to a long-lost way of life.

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