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Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles Ryder, most especially his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle. Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes: Sebastian and Julia. The novel explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy. A faithful and well-received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11-part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981.

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
First UK edition, 1945
AuthorEvelyn Waugh
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherChapman and Hall
Publication date
1945
Pages402
Preceded byPut Out More Flags (1942) 
Followed byScott-King's Modern Europe (1947) 

Plot

The novel is divided into three parts, framed by a prologue and epilogue.

Prologue

The prologue takes place during the final years of the Second World War. Charles Ryder and his battalion are sent to a country estate called Brideshead, which prompts his recollections of the rest of the story.

Et In Arcadia Ego

 
The Old Quad of Hertford College, Oxford

In 1923, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, an undergraduate reading history at a college very similar to Hertford College, Oxford, is befriended by Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of the Marquess of Marchmain and an undergraduate at Christ Church. Both Charles and Sebastian had matriculated at Oxford in the Autumn of 1922, Charles doing so shortly before his 19th birthday. The following year, Sebastian introduces Charles to his eccentric friends, including the haughty aesthete and homosexual Anthony Blanche. Sebastian also takes Charles to his family's palatial mansion, Brideshead Castle, in Wiltshire,[1] where Charles later meets the rest of Sebastian's family, including his sister, Lady Julia.

During the long summer holiday, Charles returns home to London, where he lives with his widowed father, Edward Ryder. Charles is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian incurs a minor injury, and Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the holiday together.

Sebastian's family are Catholic, which influences the Flytes' lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always believed Christianity was "without substance or merit". Lord Marchmain had converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism to marry his wife, but he later abandoned both his marriage and his new religion, and moved to Venice. Left alone, Lady Marchmain focuses even more on her faith, which is also enthusiastically espoused by her elder son, the Earl of Brideshead ("Bridey"), and by her younger daughter, Lady Cordelia.

Brideshead Deserted

The Flyte family become aware of Sebastian's drinking problem and attempt to stop him drinking which only worsens the situation. Lady Marchmain falls out with Charles and he leaves Brideshead for what he thinks is the last time.

Julia marries the rich but unsophisticated Canadian-born businessman and politician Rex Mottram. This marriage causes great sorrow to her mother because Rex, though initially planning to convert to Catholicism, turns out to be a divorcé with an ex-wife living in Canada. He and Julia subsequently marry without fanfare in the Savoy Chapel, an Anglican church where marriage between divorcés with one or more prior living spouses is permissible.

Sebastian descends into alcoholism, drifting away from the family over a two-year period. He flees to Morocco, where his drinking ruins his health. He eventually finds some solace as an under-porter and object of charity at a Catholic monastery in Tunisia. Sebastian's drifting leads to Charles's own estrangement from the Flytes.

Julia asks Charles to go and find Sebastian because Lady Marchmain (Sebastian's mother) is ill. Charles finds Sebastian in the monastery in Morocco. Sebastian is too ill to return to England, so Charles returns to London to see Brideshead and sort out Sebastian's financial affairs.

Charles is commissioned by Brideshead to paint images of Marchmain House in London before its demolition. The paintings are very successful. Charles talks to Cordelia while he paints and discovers more about the Flyte family.

A Twitch Upon the Thread

Charles finds success as an architectural painter and visits Latin America to portray the buildings there. Charles marries and fathers two children, but he becomes cold towards his wife, Celia, and she is unfaithful to him. Julia separates from Rex Mottram and Charles eventually forms a relationship with her.

Charles and Julia plan to divorce their respective spouses so they can marry each other.

Cordelia returns from ministering to the wounded in the Spanish Civil War with disturbing news about Sebastian's nomadic existence and steady decline over the past few years. She predicts he will die soon in the Tunisian monastery.

On the eve of the Second World War, the ageing Lord Marchmain, terminally ill, returns to Brideshead to die in his ancestral home. Appalled by the marriage of his elder son Brideshead to a middle-class widow past childbearing age, he names Julia heir to the estate, which prospectively offers Charles marital ownership of the house. However, Lord Marchmain's return to the faith on his deathbed changes the situation: Julia decides she cannot enter a sinful marriage with Charles, who has also been moved by Lord Marchmain's acceptance of the Last Rites.

Epilogue

The plot concludes in the early spring of 1943 (or possibly 1944 – the date is disputed).[2] Charles is "homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless". He has become an army officer and finds himself unexpectedly billeted at Brideshead, which has been taken into military use. He finds the house damaged by the army, but the private chapel, closed after Lady Marchmain's death in 1926, has been reopened for the soldiers' use. It occurs to him that the efforts of the builders – and, by extension, God's efforts – were not in vain, although their purposes may have appeared, for a time, to have been frustrated.[3]

Motifs

Catholicism

Catholicism is a significant theme of the book. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and Brideshead depicts the Catholic faith in a secular literary form. Waugh wrote to his literary agent A. D. Peters:

I hope the last conversation with Cordelia gives the theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that the theologians won't recognize it.[4]

The book brings the reader, through the narration of the initially agnostic Charles Ryder, in contact with the severely flawed but deeply Catholic Flyte family. The Catholic themes of divine grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book. Most of the major characters undergo a conversion in some way or another. Lord Marchmain, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, who lived as an adulterer, is reconciled with the Church on his deathbed. Julia, who entered a marriage with Rex Mottram that is invalid in the eyes of the Catholic Church, is involved in an extramarital affair with Charles. Julia realizes that marrying Charles will separate her forever from her faith and decides to leave him, in spite of her great attachment to him. Sebastian, the charming and flamboyant alcoholic, ends up in service to a monastery while struggling against his alcoholism.

Most significant is Charles's apparent conversion, which is expressed subtly at the end of the book, set more than 20 years after his first meeting Sebastian. Charles kneels down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and says a prayer, "an ancient, newly learned form of words"[5] – implying recent instruction in the catechism. Waugh speaks of his belief in grace in a letter to Lady Mary Lygon:

I believe that everyone in his (or her) life has the moment when he is open to Divine Grace. It's there, of course, for the asking all the time, but human lives are so planned that usually there's a particular time – sometimes, like Hubert, on his deathbed – when all resistance is down and grace can come flooding in.[6]

Waugh quotes from a short story by G. K. Chesterton to illustrate the nature of grace. Cordelia, in conversation with Charles Ryder, quotes a passage from the Father Brown detective story "The Queer Feet":

I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.[7]

This quotation provides the foundation for Waugh's Catholic treatment of the interplay of free will and grace in the moment of conversion.[citation needed]

The same themes were criticised by Waugh's contemporaries. Novelist Henry Green wrote to Waugh:

The end was not for me. As you can imagine my heart was in my mouth all through the deathbed scene, hoping against hope that the old man would not give way, that is, take the course he eventually did.[4]

Edmund Wilson, who had praised Waugh as the hope of the English novel, wrote:

The last scenes[8] are extravagantly absurd, with an absurdity that would be worthy of Waugh at his best if it were not – painful to say – meant quite seriously.[4]

Nostalgia for an age of English nobility

The Flyte family may be taken to symbolise the English nobility. One reads in the book that Brideshead has "the atmosphere of a better age", and (referring to the deaths of Lady Marchmain's brothers in the Great War) "these men must die to make a world for Hooper ... so that things might be safe for the travelling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat, wet handshake, his grinning dentures".

According to Martin Amis, the book "squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly".[9]

Charles and Sebastian's relationship

The question of whether the relationship between Charles and Sebastian is homosexual or platonic has been debated, particularly in an extended exchange between David Bittner and John Osborne in the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies from 1987 to 1991.[10] In 1994 Paul Buccio argued that the relationship was in the Victorian tradition of "intimate male friendships", which includes "Pip and Herbert Pocket [from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations], ... Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Ratty and Mole (The Wind in the Willows)",[11] and Tennyson and Arthur Henry Hallam (In Memoriam). David Higdon argued that "[I]t is impossible to regard Sebastian as other than gay; [and] Charles is so homoerotic he must at least be cheerful"; and that the attempt of some critics to downplay the homoerotic dimension of Brideshead is part of "a much larger and more important sexual war being fought as entrenched heterosexuality strives to maintain its hegemony over important twentieth century works".[10] In 2008 Christopher Hitchens derided "the ridiculous word 'platonic' that for some peculiar reason still crops up in discussion of the story".[12]

Those who interpret the relationship as overtly homosexual note that the novel states that Charles had been "in search of love in those days" when he first met Sebastian, and quote his finding "that low door in the wall ... which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden" (an allusion to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, or, more likely, "The Door in the Wall" by H. G. Wells[original research?]). The phrase "our naughtiness [was] high on the catalogue of grave sins" is also seen as a suggestion that their relationship is homosexual, because this is a mortal sin in Roman Catholic doctrine.[10] Attention has also been drawn to the fact that Charles impatiently awaits Sebastian's letters, and the suggestion in the novel that one of the reasons Charles is later in love with Julia is her physical similarity to Sebastian.[10] When the two become a couple in the novel's third part, Julia asks Charles, "You loved him, didn't you?" to which Charles replies, "Oh yes. He was the forerunner."

Waugh wrote in 1947 that "Charles's romantic affection for Sebastian is part due to the glitter of the new world Sebastian represents, part to the protective feeling of a strong towards a weak character, and part a foreshadowing of the love for Julia which is to be the consuming passion of his mature years."[13] In the novel, Cara, Lord Marchmain's mistress, says to Charles that his romantic relationship with Sebastian forms part of a process of emotional development typical of "the English and the Germans". This passage is quoted at the beginning of Paul M. Buccio's essay on the Victorian and Edwardian tradition of romantic male friendships.[11]

Principal characters

  • Charles Ryder – The protagonist and narrator of the story was raised primarily by his father after his mother died. Charles's family background is financially comfortable but emotionally hollow. He is unsure about his desires or goals in life, and is dazzled by the charming, flamboyant and seemingly carefree young Lord Sebastian Flyte. Charles, though dissatisfied with what life seems to offer, has modest success both as a student and later as a painter; less so as an Army officer. His path repeatedly crosses those of various members of the Marchmain family, and each time they awaken something deep within him. It has been noted that Charles Ryder bears some resemblance to artist Felix Kelly (1914–1994), who painted murals for aristocratic country houses.[14] Kelly was commissioned to paint murals for Castle Howard, which was used as a location in the television series and is where Ryder is depicted painting a mural for the Garden Room.[15]
  • Edward "Ned" Ryder – Educated at Oxford University himself, Charles's father is a somewhat distant and eccentric figure, but possessed of a keen wit. He seems determined to teach Charles to stand on his own feet. When Charles is forced to spend his holidays with him because he has already spent his allowance for the term, Ned, in what are considered some of the funniest passages in the book,[by whom?] strives to make Charles as uncomfortable as possible, indirectly teaching him to mind his finances more carefully.
  • Lord Marchmain (Alexander Flyte, Marquess of Marchmain) – As a young man, Lord Marchmain fell in love with a Roman Catholic woman and converted to marry her. The marriage was unhappy and, after the First World War, he refused to return to England, settling in Venice with his Italian mistress, Cara.
  • Lady Marchmain (Teresa Flyte, Marchioness of Marchmain) – A member of an ancient Recusant Roman Catholic family (the people that Waugh himself most admired). She brought up her children as Roman Catholics against her husband's wishes. Abandoned by her husband, Lady Marchmain rules over her household, enforcing her Roman Catholic morality upon her children.
  • "Bridey" (Earl of Brideshead) – The elder son of Lord and Lady Marchmain who, as the Marquess's heir, holds the courtesy title "Earl of Brideshead". He follows his mother's strict Roman Catholic beliefs, and once aspired to the priesthood. However, he is unable to connect in an emotional way with most people, who find him cold and distant. His actual Christian name is not revealed.
  • Lord Sebastian Flyte – The younger son of Lord and Lady Marchmain is haunted by a profound unhappiness brought on by a troubled relationship with his mother. An otherwise charming and attractive companion, he numbs himself with alcohol. He forms a deep friendship with Charles. Over time, however, the numbness brought on by alcohol becomes his main desire. He is thought to be based on Alastair Hugh Graham (whose name was mistakenly substituted for Sebastian's several times in the original manuscript), Hugh Patrick Lygon and Stephen Tennant.[16] Also, his relationship with his teddy bear, Aloysius, was inspired by John Betjeman and his teddy bear Archibald Ormsby-Gore.[17]
  • Lady Julia Flyte – The elder daughter of Lord and Lady Marchmain, who comes out as a debutante in the beginning of the story, eventually marrying Rex Mottram. Charles loves her for much of their lives, due in part to her resemblance to her brother Sebastian. Julia refuses at first to be controlled by the conventions of Roman Catholicism, but turns to it later in life.
  • Lady Cordelia Flyte – The youngest of the siblings is the most devout and least conflicted in her beliefs. She aspires solely to serve God.
  • Anthony Blanche – A friend of Charles and Sebastian's from Oxford, and an overt homosexual. His background is unclear but there are hints that he may be of Italian or Spanish extraction. Of all the characters, Anthony has the keenest insight into the self-deception of the people around him. Although he is witty, amiable and always an interesting companion, he manages to make Charles uncomfortable with his stark honesty, flamboyance, and flirtatiousness. The character is mainly based on Brian Howard, a contemporary of Waugh at Oxford and a flamboyant homosexual, although the scene in which Blanche declaims extracts from The Waste Land through a megaphone from his upper-storey college window was inspired by Harold Acton.[18] When Sebastian and Charles return to Oxford, in the Michaelmas term of 1923, they learn that Anthony Blanche has been sent down.[19]
  • Viscount "Boy" Mulcaster – An acquaintance of Charles from Oxford. Brash, bumbling and thoughtless, he personifies the privileged hauteur of the British aristocracy.[citation needed] He later proves an engaging and fondly doting uncle to "John-john" Ryder. As with Lord Brideshead, his Christian name is never revealed.
  • Lady Celia Ryder – Charles's wife, "Boy" Mulcaster's sister, and Julia's former schoolmate; a vivacious and socially active beauty. Charles marries her largely for convenience, which is revealed by Celia's infidelities. Charles feels freed by Celia's betrayal and decides to pursue love elsewhere, outside their marriage.
  • Rex Mottram – A Canadian of great ambition, said to be based on Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Birkenhead and Brendan Bracken.[20] Mottram wins a seat in the House of Commons. Through his marriage to Julia, he connects to the Marchmains as another step on the ladder to the top. He is disappointed with the results, and he and Julia agree to lead separate lives.
  • "Sammy" Samgrass – A fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Lady Marchmain's "pet don". Lady Marchmain funds Samgrass's projects and flatters his academic ego, while asking him to keep Sebastian in line and save him from expulsion. Samgrass uses his connections with the aristocracy to further his personal ambitions. Samgrass is an unflattering portrait of Maurice Bowra. Waugh was annoyed when friends did not recognize Bowra, and additionally annoyed to hear that Bowra claimed to enjoy the caricature.[21]
  • Cara – Lord Marchmain's Italian mistress. She is very protective of Lord Marchmain and is forthright and insightful in her relationship with Charles.

Minor characters

  • Jasper – Charles's cousin, who gives him advice about student life at Oxford, which Charles ignores.
  • Kurt – Sebastian's German friend. A deeply inadequate ex-soldier with a permanently septic foot (due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound) whom Sebastian meets in Tunisia, a man so inept that he needs Sebastian to look after him.
  • Mrs (Beryl) Muspratt – The widow of an admiral, she meets and marries a smitten Brideshead, but never becomes mistress of the great house.
  • "Nanny" Hawkins – Beloved nanny to the four Flyte children, who lives in retirement at Brideshead.

Waugh's statements about the novel

Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself".[22] This is achieved by an examination of the Roman Catholic aristocratic Flyte family as seen by the narrator, Charles Ryder.

In various letters, Waugh himself refers to the novel a number of times as his magnum opus; however, in 1950 he wrote to Graham Greene stating "I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled." In Waugh's preface to his revised edition of Brideshead (1959) the author explained the circumstances in which the novel was written, following a minor parachute accident in the six months between December 1943 and June 1944. He was mildly disparaging of the novel, stating; "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."

Reception

Acclaim

In the United States, Brideshead Revisited was the Book of the Month Club selection for January 1946.[23] In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Brideshead Revisited No. 80 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 45 on the BBC survey The Big Read.[24] In 2005, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.[25] In 2009, Newsweek magazine listed it as one of the 100 best books of world literature.[26]

Controversy

Brideshead Revisited landed on the American Library Association's (ALA) list of banned and challenged classics.[27] In 2005, Alabama Representative Gerald Allen (R-Cottondale) proposed a bill that would prohibit the use of public funds for the "purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle."[27] The bill, which would have impacted all Alabama school, public, and university libraries, also proposed to remove and destroy novels and college textbooks that suggested that homosexuality is natural.[27]

Adaptations

In 1981 Brideshead Revisited was adapted as an 11-episode TV serial, produced by Granada Television and aired on ITV, starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews as Lord Sebastian Flyte. The bulk of the serial was directed by Charles Sturridge, with a few sequences filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. John Mortimer was given a credit as writer, but most of the scripts were based on work by producer Derek Granger.

To mark the 70th anniversary of its publication in 2015, BBC Radio 4 Extra rebroadcast a four-part adaptation (from 2003), with Ben Miles as Charles Ryder and Jamie Bamber as Lord Sebastian Flyte. This version was adapted for radio by Jeremy Front and directed by Marion Nancarrow.[28][29]

In 2008 BBC Audiobooks released an unabridged reading of the book by Jeremy Irons. The recording is 11.5 hours long and consists of 10 CDs.[30] There is an abridged audiobook version read by Sir John Gielgud available on Youtube.

In 2008 Brideshead Revisited was developed into a feature film of the same title, with Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder, and Ben Whishaw as Lord Sebastian Flyte. The film was directed by Julian Jarrold and adapted by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies.

In 2020, it was announced that the novel will be adapted again for HBO. Andrew Garfield is set to play Charles Ryder, while Joe Alwyn will play Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian's sister, Julia, will be played by Rooney Mara. Ralph Fiennes will reportedly play Lord Marchmain, while Cate Blanchett is said to be in negotiations to play Lady Marchmain. Production for the film was set to begin in spring 2021, with filming taking place both in the U.K. and Italy, but was postponed indefinitely.[31] In 2022 Garfield confirmed his involvement by stating that “It’s a matter of time and schedule, and financing”[32]

References in other media

  • In scene 2 of Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (1993), one character refers to another character who attends Oxford as "Brideshead Regurgitated". Et in Arcadia ego, the Latin phrase which is the title of the major section (Book One) of Brideshead Revisited, is also a central theme to Tom Stoppard's play. Stoppard's phrase may have been inspired by the 1980s BBC comedy series Three of a Kind, starring Tracey Ullman, Lenny Henry and David Copperfield, which featured a recurring sketch entitled "Brideshead Regurgitated", with Henry in the role of Charles Ryder.
  • In the early 1980s, following the release of the television series, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (from 1983, Australian Broadcasting Corporation) produced a radio show called Brunswick Heads Revisited. Brunswick Heads is a coastal town in northern New South Wales. The series was a spoof, and made fun of the 'Englishness' of Brideshead and many amusing parallels could be drawn between the upper class characters from Brideshead and their opposite numbers from rural Australia.[33]
  • Paula Byrne's biography of Evelyn Waugh, titled Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, was published by HarperPress in the UK in August 2009 and HarperCollins New York in the US in April 2010. An excerpt was published in the Sunday Times 9 August 2009 under the headline "Sex Scandal Behind 'Brideshead Revisited'". The book concerns the 7th Earl of Beauchamp, who was the father of Waugh's friend Hugh Lygon. It states that the exiled Lord Marchmain is a version of Lord Beauchamp and Lady Marchmain of Lady Beauchamp, that the dissolute Lord Sebastian Flyte was modelled after Hugh Lygon and Lady Julia Flyte after Lady Mary Lygon. The book, which Byrne describes in the preface as a "partial life", identifies other real-life bases for events and characters in Waugh's novel, though Byrne argues carefully against simple one-to-one correspondences, suggesting instead that Waugh combined people, places and events into composite inventions, subtle transmutations of life into fiction. An illustrated extract appeared in the April 2010 issue of Vanity Fair in advance of American publication.
  • The novel is mentioned in Season 1, Episode 4 of Maron. Maron's date Justine (played by Maribeth Monroe) names Waugh as one of her favorite female authors; Maron corrects her and concedes that the novel "read as chick lit".
  • A poster of the Penguin edition cover of Brideshead Revisited appears on Charlie's wall in the TV show "Heartstopper", presumably to foreshadow Charlie and Nick's relationship being more than a friendship [34]

Related works

  • Marchmain House, the "supposedly luxurious" block of flats that replaced the Flytes' town house, serves as the wartime base for HOO (Hazardous Offensive Operations) Headquarters in Waugh's later novel Officers and Gentlemen (1955).
  • A fragment about the young Charles Ryder, entitled "Charles Ryder's Schooldays", was found after Waugh's death and is available in collections of Waugh's short works
  • There are many similarities between Brideshead Revisited and an earlier work, A Fellow of Trinity, 1891, by Alan St. Aubyn, the pen-name for Mrs Frances Marshall.
  • It has been suggested that the novel is influenced by The Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard, another novel that centres on an intense relationship between two young men of opposing religious backgrounds.[35]

References

  1. ^ "100 Local-Interest Writers And Works". South Central MediaScene. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  2. ^ David Cliffe (2002). . p. 11. Archived from the original on 15 December 2012. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  3. ^ Giles Foden (22 May 2004). "Waugh versus Hollywood". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 December 2012. Evelyn Waugh's disdain for the cinema is revealed in memos he sent to the 'Californian savages' during negotiations over film versions of Brideshead Revisited and Scoop. Giles Foden decodes two unconventional treatments
  4. ^ a b c Elmen, Paul (26 May 1982). "Brideshead Revisited: A Twitch Upon the Thread". The Christian Century: 630. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  5. ^ Waugh, Evelyn (December 2012). Brideshead Revisited. New York: Back Bay Books. p. 402. ISBN 978-0-316-21644-9.
  6. ^ Amory, Mark (ed), The Letters of Evelyn Waugh. Ticknor & Fields, 1980. p. 520.
  7. ^ Chesterton, G. K., The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, story "The Queer Feet", Ignatius Press, 2005: p. 84.
  8. ^ That is, Lord Marchmain's death scene, and the subsequent tearful separation of Ryder and Julia.
  9. ^ *Amis, Martin (2001). The War Against Cliché. Hyperion. p. 201. ISBN 0-7868-6674-8.
  10. ^ a b c d Highdon, David Leon. "Gay Sebastian and Cheerful Charles: Homoeroticism in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited". ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. (2) 5:4, October 1994.
  11. ^ a b Buccio, Paul M. "At the Heart of Tom Brown's Schooldays: Thomas Arnold and Christian Friendship" Modern Language Studies. Vol. 25, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 57–74.
  12. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "'It's all on account of the war'". The Guardian. 26 September 2008.
  13. ^ Waugh, Evelyn. "Brideshead Revisited" (memorandum). 18 February 1947. Reprinted in: Foden, Giles. "Waugh versus Hollywood". The Guardian. 21 May 2004.
  14. ^ Trevelyan, Jill (28 March 2009), "Brideshead revisited", , archived from the original on 3 June 2009.
  15. ^ Donald Bassett, "Felix Kelly and Brideshead" in the British Art Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Autumn 2005): 52–7. Also, Donald Bassett, Fix: The Art & Life of Felix Kelly, 2007.
  16. ^ Copping, Jasper (18 May 2008). "Brideshead Revisited: Where Evelyn Waugh found inspiration for Sebastian Flyte". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
  17. ^ . Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
  18. ^ "A Review of Mad World | Edward T. Oakes". First Things.
  19. ^ Frank Kermode (1993). "Introduction". Brideshead Revisited. Everyman's Library. p. xvii. ISBN 978-1-85715-172-5.
  20. ^ Wilson, John Howard (2005). ""Not a Man for Whom I Ever Had Esteem": Evelyn Waugh on Winston Churchill". In Villar Flor, Carlos; Davis, Robert Murray (eds.). Waugh Without End: New Trends in Evelyn Waugh Studies. Bern: Peter Lang. p. 249. ISBN 3039104969. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  21. ^ William Amos, The Originals – Who's Really Who in Fiction. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985, pp.454-5
  22. ^ Memo dated 18 February 1947 from Evelyn Waugh to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, reproduced in Giles Foden (22 May 2004). "Waugh versus Hollywood". The Guardian. p. 34.
  23. ^ Jeffrey M. Heath, The Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and his writing (1982), p. 186
  24. ^ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 19 October 2012
  25. ^ Richard Lacayo (16 October 2005). . Time. Archived from the original on 19 October 2005.
  26. ^ "Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List – Book awards". Library Thing.
  27. ^ a b c Office of Intellectual Freedom (26 March 2013). "Banned & Challenged Classics". American Library Association. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
  28. ^ Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited. BBC Radio 4 Extra.
  29. ^ "BBC - Brideshead Revisited - Media Centre". www.bbc.co.uk.
  30. ^ Audible.co.uk: Brideshead Revisited
  31. ^ Crosbie, Eve (30 November 2020). "There's a Brideshead Revisited Television Remake in the Works Courtesy of the BBC and HBO". POPSUGAR Entertainment. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  32. ^ Clarke, Donald. "Andrew Garfield: 'I needed to be with these freaks and lunatics'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 14 February 2022.
  33. ^ Tate, Brian (13 August 2011). "Radio Comedy for the TV Generation". They Made Us Laugh. ABC. RN. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
  34. ^ "Secret". Heartstopper. Retrieved 9 July 2022.
  35. ^ Burch, Francis F. "Robert Hugh Benson, Roger Martin du Gard and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited". Notes and Queries. 37.1 (1990): 68. Print.

Further reading

External links

  • Hutchens, John K. (30 December 1945). "Evelyn Waugh's Finest Novel". The New York Times.
  • A Companion to the novel with exhaustive footnotes on cultural references in the text
  • Brideshead Revisited at Faded Page (Canada)
  • Downloadable audio about Brideshead Revisited and Evelyn Waugh from EWTN
  • Guardian.co.uk, Article Regarding Waugh and Hollywood.
  • May 2008 Telegraph.co.uk[dead link], Telegraph Magazine, edited extract from 'Madresfield: The Real Brideshead' by Jane Mulvagh (Doubleday)

brideshead, revisited, this, article, about, novel, series, series, film, film, sacred, profane, memories, captain, charles, ryder, novel, english, writer, evelyn, waugh, first, published, 1945, follows, from, 1920s, early, 1940s, life, romances, protagonist, . This article is about the novel For the TV series see Brideshead Revisited TV series For the film see Brideshead Revisited film Brideshead Revisited The Sacred amp Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh first published in 1945 It follows from the 1920s to the early 1940s the life and romances of the protagonist Charles Ryder most especially his friendship with the Flytes a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes Sebastian and Julia The novel explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy A faithful and well received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11 part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981 Brideshead Revisited The Sacred amp Profane Memories of Captain Charles RyderFirst UK edition 1945AuthorEvelyn WaughCountryUnited KingdomLanguageEnglishPublisherChapman and HallPublication date1945Pages402Preceded byPut Out More Flags 1942 Followed byScott King s Modern Europe 1947 Contents 1 Plot 1 1 Prologue 1 2 Et In Arcadia Ego 1 3 Brideshead Deserted 1 4 A Twitch Upon the Thread 1 5 Epilogue 2 Motifs 2 1 Catholicism 2 2 Nostalgia for an age of English nobility 2 3 Charles and Sebastian s relationship 3 Principal characters 3 1 Minor characters 4 Waugh s statements about the novel 5 Reception 5 1 Acclaim 5 2 Controversy 6 Adaptations 7 References in other media 8 Related works 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksPlot EditThe novel is divided into three parts framed by a prologue and epilogue Prologue Edit The prologue takes place during the final years of the Second World War Charles Ryder and his battalion are sent to a country estate called Brideshead which prompts his recollections of the rest of the story Et In Arcadia Ego Edit The Old Quad of Hertford College Oxford In 1923 protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder an undergraduate reading history at a college very similar to Hertford College Oxford is befriended by Lord Sebastian Flyte the younger son of the Marquess of Marchmain and an undergraduate at Christ Church Both Charles and Sebastian had matriculated at Oxford in the Autumn of 1922 Charles doing so shortly before his 19th birthday The following year Sebastian introduces Charles to his eccentric friends including the haughty aesthete and homosexual Anthony Blanche Sebastian also takes Charles to his family s palatial mansion Brideshead Castle in Wiltshire 1 where Charles later meets the rest of Sebastian s family including his sister Lady Julia During the long summer holiday Charles returns home to London where he lives with his widowed father Edward Ryder Charles is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian incurs a minor injury and Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the holiday together Sebastian s family are Catholic which influences the Flytes lives as well as the content of their conversations all of which surprises Charles who had always believed Christianity was without substance or merit Lord Marchmain had converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism to marry his wife but he later abandoned both his marriage and his new religion and moved to Venice Left alone Lady Marchmain focuses even more on her faith which is also enthusiastically espoused by her elder son the Earl of Brideshead Bridey and by her younger daughter Lady Cordelia Brideshead Deserted Edit The Flyte family become aware of Sebastian s drinking problem and attempt to stop him drinking which only worsens the situation Lady Marchmain falls out with Charles and he leaves Brideshead for what he thinks is the last time Julia marries the rich but unsophisticated Canadian born businessman and politician Rex Mottram This marriage causes great sorrow to her mother because Rex though initially planning to convert to Catholicism turns out to be a divorce with an ex wife living in Canada He and Julia subsequently marry without fanfare in the Savoy Chapel an Anglican church where marriage between divorces with one or more prior living spouses is permissible Sebastian descends into alcoholism drifting away from the family over a two year period He flees to Morocco where his drinking ruins his health He eventually finds some solace as an under porter and object of charity at a Catholic monastery in Tunisia Sebastian s drifting leads to Charles s own estrangement from the Flytes Julia asks Charles to go and find Sebastian because Lady Marchmain Sebastian s mother is ill Charles finds Sebastian in the monastery in Morocco Sebastian is too ill to return to England so Charles returns to London to see Brideshead and sort out Sebastian s financial affairs Charles is commissioned by Brideshead to paint images of Marchmain House in London before its demolition The paintings are very successful Charles talks to Cordelia while he paints and discovers more about the Flyte family A Twitch Upon the Thread Edit Charles finds success as an architectural painter and visits Latin America to portray the buildings there Charles marries and fathers two children but he becomes cold towards his wife Celia and she is unfaithful to him Julia separates from Rex Mottram and Charles eventually forms a relationship with her Charles and Julia plan to divorce their respective spouses so they can marry each other Cordelia returns from ministering to the wounded in the Spanish Civil War with disturbing news about Sebastian s nomadic existence and steady decline over the past few years She predicts he will die soon in the Tunisian monastery On the eve of the Second World War the ageing Lord Marchmain terminally ill returns to Brideshead to die in his ancestral home Appalled by the marriage of his elder son Brideshead to a middle class widow past childbearing age he names Julia heir to the estate which prospectively offers Charles marital ownership of the house However Lord Marchmain s return to the faith on his deathbed changes the situation Julia decides she cannot enter a sinful marriage with Charles who has also been moved by Lord Marchmain s acceptance of the Last Rites Epilogue Edit The plot concludes in the early spring of 1943 or possibly 1944 the date is disputed 2 Charles is homeless childless middle aged and loveless He has become an army officer and finds himself unexpectedly billeted at Brideshead which has been taken into military use He finds the house damaged by the army but the private chapel closed after Lady Marchmain s death in 1926 has been reopened for the soldiers use It occurs to him that the efforts of the builders and by extension God s efforts were not in vain although their purposes may have appeared for a time to have been frustrated 3 Motifs EditCatholicism EditCatholicism is a significant theme of the book Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and Brideshead depicts the Catholic faith in a secular literary form Waugh wrote to his literary agent A D Peters I hope the last conversation with Cordelia gives the theological clue The whole thing is steeped in theology but I begin to agree that the theologians won t recognize it 4 The book brings the reader through the narration of the initially agnostic Charles Ryder in contact with the severely flawed but deeply Catholic Flyte family The Catholic themes of divine grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book Most of the major characters undergo a conversion in some way or another Lord Marchmain a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism who lived as an adulterer is reconciled with the Church on his deathbed Julia who entered a marriage with Rex Mottram that is invalid in the eyes of the Catholic Church is involved in an extramarital affair with Charles Julia realizes that marrying Charles will separate her forever from her faith and decides to leave him in spite of her great attachment to him Sebastian the charming and flamboyant alcoholic ends up in service to a monastery while struggling against his alcoholism Most significant is Charles s apparent conversion which is expressed subtly at the end of the book set more than 20 years after his first meeting Sebastian Charles kneels down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and says a prayer an ancient newly learned form of words 5 implying recent instruction in the catechism Waugh speaks of his belief in grace in a letter to Lady Mary Lygon I believe that everyone in his or her life has the moment when he is open to Divine Grace It s there of course for the asking all the time but human lives are so planned that usually there s a particular time sometimes like Hubert on his deathbed when all resistance is down and grace can come flooding in 6 Waugh quotes from a short story by G K Chesterton to illustrate the nature of grace Cordelia in conversation with Charles Ryder quotes a passage from the Father Brown detective story The Queer Feet I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread 7 This quotation provides the foundation for Waugh s Catholic treatment of the interplay of free will and grace in the moment of conversion citation needed The same themes were criticised by Waugh s contemporaries Novelist Henry Green wrote to Waugh The end was not for me As you can imagine my heart was in my mouth all through the deathbed scene hoping against hope that the old man would not give way that is take the course he eventually did 4 Edmund Wilson who had praised Waugh as the hope of the English novel wrote The last scenes 8 are extravagantly absurd with an absurdity that would be worthy of Waugh at his best if it were not painful to say meant quite seriously 4 Nostalgia for an age of English nobility Edit The Flyte family may be taken to symbolise the English nobility One reads in the book that Brideshead has the atmosphere of a better age and referring to the deaths of Lady Marchmain s brothers in the Great War these men must die to make a world for Hooper so that things might be safe for the travelling salesman with his polygonal pince nez his fat wet handshake his grinning dentures According to Martin Amis the book squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly 9 Charles and Sebastian s relationship Edit The question of whether the relationship between Charles and Sebastian is homosexual or platonic has been debated particularly in an extended exchange between David Bittner and John Osborne in the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies from 1987 to 1991 10 In 1994 Paul Buccio argued that the relationship was in the Victorian tradition of intimate male friendships which includes Pip and Herbert Pocket from Charles Dickens Great Expectations Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson Ratty and Mole The Wind in the Willows 11 and Tennyson and Arthur Henry Hallam In Memoriam David Higdon argued that I t is impossible to regard Sebastian as other than gay and Charles is so homoerotic he must at least be cheerful and that the attempt of some critics to downplay the homoerotic dimension of Brideshead is part of a much larger and more important sexual war being fought as entrenched heterosexuality strives to maintain its hegemony over important twentieth century works 10 In 2008 Christopher Hitchens derided the ridiculous word platonic that for some peculiar reason still crops up in discussion of the story 12 Those who interpret the relationship as overtly homosexual note that the novel states that Charles had been in search of love in those days when he first met Sebastian and quote his finding that low door in the wall which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden an allusion to Alice s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll or more likely The Door in the Wall by H G Wells original research The phrase our naughtiness was high on the catalogue of grave sins is also seen as a suggestion that their relationship is homosexual because this is a mortal sin in Roman Catholic doctrine 10 Attention has also been drawn to the fact that Charles impatiently awaits Sebastian s letters and the suggestion in the novel that one of the reasons Charles is later in love with Julia is her physical similarity to Sebastian 10 When the two become a couple in the novel s third part Julia asks Charles You loved him didn t you to which Charles replies Oh yes He was the forerunner Waugh wrote in 1947 that Charles s romantic affection for Sebastian is part due to the glitter of the new world Sebastian represents part to the protective feeling of a strong towards a weak character and part a foreshadowing of the love for Julia which is to be the consuming passion of his mature years 13 In the novel Cara Lord Marchmain s mistress says to Charles that his romantic relationship with Sebastian forms part of a process of emotional development typical of the English and the Germans This passage is quoted at the beginning of Paul M Buccio s essay on the Victorian and Edwardian tradition of romantic male friendships 11 Principal characters EditCharles Ryder The protagonist and narrator of the story was raised primarily by his father after his mother died Charles s family background is financially comfortable but emotionally hollow He is unsure about his desires or goals in life and is dazzled by the charming flamboyant and seemingly carefree young Lord Sebastian Flyte Charles though dissatisfied with what life seems to offer has modest success both as a student and later as a painter less so as an Army officer His path repeatedly crosses those of various members of the Marchmain family and each time they awaken something deep within him It has been noted that Charles Ryder bears some resemblance to artist Felix Kelly 1914 1994 who painted murals for aristocratic country houses 14 Kelly was commissioned to paint murals for Castle Howard which was used as a location in the television series and is where Ryder is depicted painting a mural for the Garden Room 15 Edward Ned Ryder Educated at Oxford University himself Charles s father is a somewhat distant and eccentric figure but possessed of a keen wit He seems determined to teach Charles to stand on his own feet When Charles is forced to spend his holidays with him because he has already spent his allowance for the term Ned in what are considered some of the funniest passages in the book by whom strives to make Charles as uncomfortable as possible indirectly teaching him to mind his finances more carefully Lord Marchmain Alexander Flyte Marquess of Marchmain As a young man Lord Marchmain fell in love with a Roman Catholic woman and converted to marry her The marriage was unhappy and after the First World War he refused to return to England settling in Venice with his Italian mistress Cara Lady Marchmain Teresa Flyte Marchioness of Marchmain A member of an ancient Recusant Roman Catholic family the people that Waugh himself most admired She brought up her children as Roman Catholics against her husband s wishes Abandoned by her husband Lady Marchmain rules over her household enforcing her Roman Catholic morality upon her children Bridey Earl of Brideshead The elder son of Lord and Lady Marchmain who as the Marquess s heir holds the courtesy title Earl of Brideshead He follows his mother s strict Roman Catholic beliefs and once aspired to the priesthood However he is unable to connect in an emotional way with most people who find him cold and distant His actual Christian name is not revealed Lord Sebastian Flyte The younger son of Lord and Lady Marchmain is haunted by a profound unhappiness brought on by a troubled relationship with his mother An otherwise charming and attractive companion he numbs himself with alcohol He forms a deep friendship with Charles Over time however the numbness brought on by alcohol becomes his main desire He is thought to be based on Alastair Hugh Graham whose name was mistakenly substituted for Sebastian s several times in the original manuscript Hugh Patrick Lygon and Stephen Tennant 16 Also his relationship with his teddy bear Aloysius was inspired by John Betjeman and his teddy bear Archibald Ormsby Gore 17 Lady Julia Flyte The elder daughter of Lord and Lady Marchmain who comes out as a debutante in the beginning of the story eventually marrying Rex Mottram Charles loves her for much of their lives due in part to her resemblance to her brother Sebastian Julia refuses at first to be controlled by the conventions of Roman Catholicism but turns to it later in life Lady Cordelia Flyte The youngest of the siblings is the most devout and least conflicted in her beliefs She aspires solely to serve God Anthony Blanche A friend of Charles and Sebastian s from Oxford and an overt homosexual His background is unclear but there are hints that he may be of Italian or Spanish extraction Of all the characters Anthony has the keenest insight into the self deception of the people around him Although he is witty amiable and always an interesting companion he manages to make Charles uncomfortable with his stark honesty flamboyance and flirtatiousness The character is mainly based on Brian Howard a contemporary of Waugh at Oxford and a flamboyant homosexual although the scene in which Blanche declaims extracts from The Waste Land through a megaphone from his upper storey college window was inspired by Harold Acton 18 When Sebastian and Charles return to Oxford in the Michaelmas term of 1923 they learn that Anthony Blanche has been sent down 19 Viscount Boy Mulcaster An acquaintance of Charles from Oxford Brash bumbling and thoughtless he personifies the privileged hauteur of the British aristocracy citation needed He later proves an engaging and fondly doting uncle to John john Ryder As with Lord Brideshead his Christian name is never revealed Lady Celia Ryder Charles s wife Boy Mulcaster s sister and Julia s former schoolmate a vivacious and socially active beauty Charles marries her largely for convenience which is revealed by Celia s infidelities Charles feels freed by Celia s betrayal and decides to pursue love elsewhere outside their marriage Rex Mottram A Canadian of great ambition said to be based on Lord Beaverbrook Lord Birkenhead and Brendan Bracken 20 Mottram wins a seat in the House of Commons Through his marriage to Julia he connects to the Marchmains as another step on the ladder to the top He is disappointed with the results and he and Julia agree to lead separate lives Sammy Samgrass A fellow of All Souls College Oxford and Lady Marchmain s pet don Lady Marchmain funds Samgrass s projects and flatters his academic ego while asking him to keep Sebastian in line and save him from expulsion Samgrass uses his connections with the aristocracy to further his personal ambitions Samgrass is an unflattering portrait of Maurice Bowra Waugh was annoyed when friends did not recognize Bowra and additionally annoyed to hear that Bowra claimed to enjoy the caricature 21 Cara Lord Marchmain s Italian mistress She is very protective of Lord Marchmain and is forthright and insightful in her relationship with Charles Minor characters Edit Jasper Charles s cousin who gives him advice about student life at Oxford which Charles ignores Kurt Sebastian s German friend A deeply inadequate ex soldier with a permanently septic foot due to a self inflicted gunshot wound whom Sebastian meets in Tunisia a man so inept that he needs Sebastian to look after him Mrs Beryl Muspratt The widow of an admiral she meets and marries a smitten Brideshead but never becomes mistress of the great house Nanny Hawkins Beloved nanny to the four Flyte children who lives in retirement at Brideshead Waugh s statements about the novel EditWaugh wrote that the novel deals with what is theologically termed the operation of Grace that is to say the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself 22 This is achieved by an examination of the Roman Catholic aristocratic Flyte family as seen by the narrator Charles Ryder In various letters Waugh himself refers to the novel a number of times as his magnum opus however in 1950 he wrote to Graham Greene stating I re read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled In Waugh s preface to his revised edition of Brideshead 1959 the author explained the circumstances in which the novel was written following a minor parachute accident in the six months between December 1943 and June 1944 He was mildly disparaging of the novel stating 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 Reception EditAcclaim Edit In the United States Brideshead Revisited was the Book of the Month Club selection for January 1946 23 In 1998 the Modern Library ranked Brideshead Revisited No 80 on its list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th century In 2003 the novel was listed at number 45 on the BBC survey The Big Read 24 In 2005 it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English language novels from 1923 to the present 25 In 2009 Newsweek magazine listed it as one of the 100 best books of world literature 26 Controversy Edit Brideshead Revisited landed on the American Library Association s ALA list of banned and challenged classics 27 In 2005 Alabama Representative Gerald Allen R Cottondale proposed a bill that would prohibit the use of public funds for the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle 27 The bill which would have impacted all Alabama school public and university libraries also proposed to remove and destroy novels and college textbooks that suggested that homosexuality is natural 27 Adaptations EditIn 1981 Brideshead Revisited was adapted as an 11 episode TV serial produced by Granada Television and aired on ITV starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews as Lord Sebastian Flyte The bulk of the serial was directed by Charles Sturridge with a few sequences filmed by Michael Lindsay Hogg John Mortimer was given a credit as writer but most of the scripts were based on work by producer Derek Granger To mark the 70th anniversary of its publication in 2015 BBC Radio 4 Extra rebroadcast a four part adaptation from 2003 with Ben Miles as Charles Ryder and Jamie Bamber as Lord Sebastian Flyte This version was adapted for radio by Jeremy Front and directed by Marion Nancarrow 28 29 In 2008 BBC Audiobooks released an unabridged reading of the book by Jeremy Irons The recording is 11 5 hours long and consists of 10 CDs 30 There is an abridged audiobook version read by Sir John Gielgud available on Youtube In 2008 Brideshead Revisited was developed into a feature film of the same title with Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Lord Sebastian Flyte The film was directed by Julian Jarrold and adapted by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies In 2020 it was announced that the novel will be adapted again for HBO Andrew Garfield is set to play Charles Ryder while Joe Alwyn will play Sebastian Flyte Sebastian s sister Julia will be played by Rooney Mara Ralph Fiennes will reportedly play Lord Marchmain while Cate Blanchett is said to be in negotiations to play Lady Marchmain Production for the film was set to begin in spring 2021 with filming taking place both in the U K and Italy but was postponed indefinitely 31 In 2022 Garfield confirmed his involvement by stating that It s a matter of time and schedule and financing 32 References in other media EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed February 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message In scene 2 of Tom Stoppard s play Arcadia 1993 one character refers to another character who attends Oxford as Brideshead Regurgitated Et in Arcadia ego the Latin phrase which is the title of the major section Book One of Brideshead Revisited is also a central theme to Tom Stoppard s play Stoppard s phrase may have been inspired by the 1980s BBC comedy series Three of a Kind starring Tracey Ullman Lenny Henry and David Copperfield which featured a recurring sketch entitled Brideshead Regurgitated with Henry in the role of Charles Ryder In the early 1980s following the release of the television series the Australian Broadcasting Commission from 1983 Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a radio show called Brunswick Heads Revisited Brunswick Heads is a coastal town in northern New South Wales The series was a spoof and made fun of the Englishness of Brideshead and many amusing parallels could be drawn between the upper class characters from Brideshead and their opposite numbers from rural Australia 33 Paula Byrne s biography of Evelyn Waugh titled Mad World Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead was published by HarperPress in the UK in August 2009 and HarperCollins New York in the US in April 2010 An excerpt was published in the Sunday Times 9 August 2009 under the headline Sex Scandal Behind Brideshead Revisited The book concerns the 7th Earl of Beauchamp who was the father of Waugh s friend Hugh Lygon It states that the exiled Lord Marchmain is a version of Lord Beauchamp and Lady Marchmain of Lady Beauchamp that the dissolute Lord Sebastian Flyte was modelled after Hugh Lygon and Lady Julia Flyte after Lady Mary Lygon The book which Byrne describes in the preface as a partial life identifies other real life bases for events and characters in Waugh s novel though Byrne argues carefully against simple one to one correspondences suggesting instead that Waugh combined people places and events into composite inventions subtle transmutations of life into fiction An illustrated extract appeared in the April 2010 issue of Vanity Fair in advance of American publication The novel is mentioned in Season 1 Episode 4 of Maron Maron s date Justine played by Maribeth Monroe names Waugh as one of her favorite female authors Maron corrects her and concedes that the novel read as chick lit A poster of the Penguin edition cover of Brideshead Revisited appears on Charlie s wall in the TV show Heartstopper presumably to foreshadow Charlie and Nick s relationship being more than a friendship 34 Related works EditMarchmain House the supposedly luxurious block of flats that replaced the Flytes town house serves as the wartime base for HOO Hazardous Offensive Operations Headquarters in Waugh s later novel Officers and Gentlemen 1955 A fragment about the young Charles Ryder entitled Charles Ryder s Schooldays was found after Waugh s death and is available in collections of Waugh s short works There are many similarities between Brideshead Revisited and an earlier work A Fellow of Trinity 1891 by Alan St Aubyn the pen name for Mrs Frances Marshall It has been suggested that the novel is influenced by The Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard another novel that centres on an intense relationship between two young men of opposing religious backgrounds 35 References Edit 100 Local Interest Writers And Works South Central MediaScene Retrieved 13 December 2012 David Cliffe 2002 The Brideshead Revisited Companion p 11 Archived from the original on 15 December 2012 Retrieved 13 December 2012 Giles Foden 22 May 2004 Waugh versus Hollywood The Guardian Retrieved 13 December 2012 Evelyn Waugh s disdain for the cinema is revealed in memos he sent to the Californian savages during negotiations over film versions of Brideshead Revisited and Scoop Giles Foden decodes two unconventional treatments a b c Elmen Paul 26 May 1982 Brideshead Revisited A Twitch Upon the Thread The Christian Century 630 Retrieved 25 October 2017 Waugh Evelyn December 2012 Brideshead Revisited New York Back Bay Books p 402 ISBN 978 0 316 21644 9 Amory Mark ed The Letters of Evelyn Waugh Ticknor amp Fields 1980 p 520 Chesterton G K The Collected Works of G K Chesterton story The Queer Feet Ignatius Press 2005 p 84 That is Lord Marchmain s death scene and the subsequent tearful separation of Ryder and Julia Amis Martin 2001 The War Against Cliche Hyperion p 201 ISBN 0 7868 6674 8 a b c d Highdon David Leon Gay Sebastian and Cheerful Charles Homoeroticism in Waugh s Brideshead Revisited ARIEL A Review of International English Literature 2 5 4 October 1994 a b Buccio Paul M At the Heart of Tom Brown s Schooldays Thomas Arnold and Christian Friendship Modern Language Studies Vol 25 No 4 Autumn 1995 pp 57 74 Hitchens Christopher It s all on account of the war The Guardian 26 September 2008 Waugh Evelyn Brideshead Revisited memorandum 18 February 1947 Reprinted in Foden Giles Waugh versus Hollywood The Guardian 21 May 2004 Trevelyan Jill 28 March 2009 Brideshead revisited NZ Listener archived from the original on 3 June 2009 Donald Bassett Felix Kelly and Brideshead in the British Art Journal Vol 6 No 2 Autumn 2005 52 7 Also Donald Bassett Fix The Art amp Life of Felix Kelly 2007 Copping Jasper 18 May 2008 Brideshead Revisited Where Evelyn Waugh found inspiration for Sebastian Flyte The Daily Telegraph Retrieved 22 August 2011 Aloysius The Brideshead Bear Archived from the original on 31 March 2012 Retrieved 1 September 2011 A Review of Mad World Edward T Oakes First Things Frank Kermode 1993 Introduction Brideshead Revisited Everyman s Library p xvii ISBN 978 1 85715 172 5 Wilson John Howard 2005 Not a Man for Whom I Ever Had Esteem Evelyn Waugh on Winston Churchill In Villar Flor Carlos Davis Robert Murray eds Waugh Without End New Trends in Evelyn Waugh Studies Bern Peter Lang p 249 ISBN 3039104969 Retrieved 25 October 2017 William Amos The Originals Who s Really Who in Fiction London Jonathan Cape 1985 pp 454 5 Memo dated 18 February 1947 from Evelyn Waugh to Metro Goldwyn Mayer reproduced in Giles Foden 22 May 2004 Waugh versus Hollywood The Guardian p 34 Jeffrey M Heath The Picturesque Prison Evelyn Waugh and his writing 1982 p 186 BBC The Big Read BBC April 2003 Retrieved 19 October 2012 Richard Lacayo 16 October 2005 All Time 100 Novels The critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English language novels published since 1923 the beginning of Time Time Archived from the original on 19 October 2005 Newsweek s Top 100 Books The Meta List Book awards Library Thing a b c Office of Intellectual Freedom 26 March 2013 Banned amp Challenged Classics American Library Association Retrieved 18 June 2021 Waugh Evelyn Brideshead Revisited BBC Radio 4 Extra BBC Brideshead Revisited Media Centre www bbc co uk Audible co uk Brideshead Revisited Crosbie Eve 30 November 2020 There s a Brideshead Revisited Television Remake in the Works Courtesy of the BBC and HBO POPSUGAR Entertainment Retrieved 1 December 2020 Clarke Donald Andrew Garfield I needed to be with these freaks and lunatics The Irish Times Retrieved 14 February 2022 Tate Brian 13 August 2011 Radio Comedy for the TV Generation They Made Us Laugh ABC RN Retrieved 15 February 2022 Secret Heartstopper Retrieved 9 July 2022 Burch Francis F Robert Hugh Benson Roger Martin du Gard and Evelyn Waugh s Brideshead Revisited Notes and Queries 37 1 1990 68 Print Further reading EditWaugh Evelyn 1973 1946 Brideshead Revisited Boston Little Brown and Company ISBN 0 316 92634 5 Mulvagh Jane 2008 Madresfield The Real Brideshead London Doubleday ISBN 978 0 385 60772 8 Byrne Paula 2009 Mad World Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead London Harper Press ISBN 978 0 00 724376 1External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Brideshead Revisited Hutchens John K 30 December 1945 Evelyn Waugh s Finest Novel The New York Times A Companion to the novel with exhaustive footnotes on cultural references in the text Brideshead Revisited at Faded Page Canada Downloadable audio about Brideshead Revisited and Evelyn Waugh from EWTN Guardian co uk Article Regarding Waugh and Hollywood May 2008 Telegraph co uk dead link Telegraph Magazine edited extract from Madresfield The Real Brideshead by Jane Mulvagh Doubleday Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Brideshead Revisited amp oldid 1146263506, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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