Brideshead Revisited

WHEN IT was first mooted that Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited might be turned into a TV series there were many raised eyebrows.

Waugh is probably best known for his satirical novels Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust and Scoop!, but Brideshead was a weighty, serious and, some critics would say, ponderous examination of the Catholic faith, into which Waugh himself was a late convert.

It is the story of how a young bohemian painter, Charles Ryder, becomes involved with the aristocratic, Catholic Flyte family, whose country seat is the Brideshead of the title.

Striking up, first, a deep, almost romantic, friendship with the troubled Sebastian, his