Back to Brideshead

Felicity Jones, far left, as Cordelia Flyte, Hayley Atwell as Julia Flyte, Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain and Matthew Goode as Charles Ryde in Brideshead Revisited Brideshead Revisited has become one of the inescapable cultural objects of our — comparatively — recent times. Many otherwise sober critics and literary scholars regard the novel as Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece. I've always disagreed. I think his Sword of Honor trilogy is his great work — infinitely sadder and wiser — though for fall-about merriment it's hard to beat Scoop. But that's almost beside the point. It looks as if every generation is going to get an adaptation in another medium of Brideshead, so rich in nostalgia for the interwar spirit of Britain, so arustle with swell clothes and the (largely) frustrated longings of both the homo- and heterosexual... [read full story]