Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

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Penguin, 2003 - Families - 331 pages
Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, gradually becoming infatuated with them and the life of privilege they inhabit - in particular, with Sebastian's remote sister, Julia. But he gradually comes to recognize his spiritual and social distance from them, eventually discovering a world where duty and desire, faith and happiness are in conflict.

About the author (2003)

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies(1930), Black Mischief(1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of Europe, the Near East, Africa and tropical America, and published a number of travel books, including Labels(1930), Remote People(1931), Ninety-Two Days(1934) and Waugh in Abyssinia(1936).

In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flagsand then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. When the Going was Goodand The Loved Onepreceded Men at Arms, which came out in 1952, the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour'trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemenand Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961. In 1964 he published his last book, A Little Learning

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