The first part of the book focuses very much on his friendship with Sebastian, a charming, eccentric young man, with unusual quirks, as Ryder discovers when talking to his barber: The story is narrated by Ryder, who is our guide through the world of his friend’s family. At the time, he feared this was a world of the past, and that he was describing things future generations would never see for themselves (as it turned out, the upper classes proved to be far more enduring than he suspected…). In his 1959 preface, the writer virtually apologises for the opulence of the lifestyle described in the book, realising that he may have laid it on a little thick.

The cover of my book has stills from the famous TV series (or ‘serial’ as it proclaims), one of those productions that introduced classic books to millions of viewers, and as later shows like Downton Abbey prove, UK (and global) audiences continue to be fascinated by rich English families in big houses. As it turns out, he’s witness to the end of an era, with a glorious way of life about to fade into history. Shortly afterwards comes his first visit to the stately home of Brideshead, and he gets to meet the rest of his friend’s family, gradually gaining insights into the lives of the gentry. We then go back twenty years to see Charles as a new student at Oxford, making the acquaintance of Sebastian Flyte, the youngest son of an English peer. As a result, it’s only the next morning, when he asks one of his colleagues where they actually are, that Ryder learns that fate has brought him back to a place he knows very well, one that played a pivotal role in his formative years. Having managed to get his troops organised, he embarks on a lengthy train journey across England, arriving at the new camp location late at night. We’re off on a journey through time, and rural England, to meet a rather unusual family and their house – a very big house in the country…Įvelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited begins in 1942 as Charles Ryder, an army officer working on the home front, receives orders to get ready for a change of location.

The end of the year is always a time for reflection, and today’s choice is certainly one that encourages a trip down memory lane, with the meat of the text devoted to events that happened decades before the book’s starting point. However, while that usually means works from the Victorian era (and there will be a couple of those next week), this year’s Christmas post looks at a slightly later book. At this time of year, with the publishing world clocking off and most people focusing on the holidays, I tend to take a short break from fiction in translation, turning instead to classics of English literature.

Brides head revisited