Book description
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, artistic inhabitants the Marchmains, becoming infatuated
with them and the life of privilege they inhabit in particular, with
Sebastian s remote sister, Julia. But, as duty and desire, faith and
happiness come into conflict, and the Marchmains struggle to find their
place in a changing world, Charles eventually comes to recognize his
spiritual and social distance from them. Evelyn Waugh was born in
Hampstead in 1903. 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 1942 he published Put Out More Flags
and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited
. When the Going was Good
and The Loved One
preceded Men at Arms
, which came out in 1952. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen
and Unconditional Surrender
, followed in 1955 and 1961. In 1964 he published A Little Learning
, the first volume of an autobiography. He died in 1966.
