Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred And Profane Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder

This Penguin Modern Classics edition of Brideshead has a good clear typeface and a good-sized font, so its 452 pages are easy on the eye."I started reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited today. He writes so well that it seems a pity that he hasn't got something better to write about." Thus wrote Duff Cooper in his diary for August 1945. I agree.Although the book contains some brilliant passages (Anthony Blanche is particularly delicious) at least half a dozen of Waugh's novels are more entertaining. For outrageous laugh-out-loud satire Scoop and Decline and Fall are very good. (If you are looking for an "Oxford novel" Decline and Fall ticks the box.) Vile Bodies contains numerous amusing vignettes, but is not as coherent as Scoop and Decline and Fall. (Black Mischief is in my opinion not very good because Waugh is at his best when satirising his own people.) A Handful of Dust is very dark, but sustains dramatic tension much better than Brideshead. Finally, the trilogy of Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender is a brilliant portrayal of the Second World War from a British perspective. I would not bother with Brideshead unless you have time to read everything Waugh wrote.

Less drab than I imagined, this post-war book had a great balance of bleak war-stuff and jazzy estate house stuff. Fancy Gatsby-style goings on and some really great characters, well-drawn and memorable. The story moves well, and seems to be powered by nostalgia, which is a big deal at the moment because we all hate the world we're living in, too. Except that schlub in the White House, am I right??Anyway, it's good stuff. It feels more contemporary than I expected, not at all dry, and is actually About Something. Great opening, great ending. Recommended.8/10David BrookesAuthor of 'Cycles of Udaipur'

Evelyn Waugh called this his 'magnum opus'. Rightly so, though The Sword of Honour trilogy is very good.The prose in Brideshead reaches directly back to the richness and the cadences of Sir Thomas Browne and the St James Bible. A magnificent story narrated in unforgettable prose. It presages the Age of Hooper, the world we live in today. A reader can replace 'Hooper' with any name he chooses, the choice is vast.This is a book to re-read every decade.

This is really perhaps my favourite religious themed novel, and mainly because it is (unlike Dostoevsky) one in which the storyline itself is the essence and the essence of the message, the characters themselves do not philosophise, that is the power of the novel, and the kind of religiously themed novel I prefer. Similar perhaps to the works of Flannery O'Connor in that sense.

This has to be my favourite novel had a copy almost 30 years ago and re read it so many times it actually fell apart. I opened it again last week and felt the same pleasure re reading revisiting this book. The style and characterisations are excellent and made me laugh out loud in parts. If one just saw the series on TV it would be a pity not to read the book also to see the words spoken by the brilliantly casted actors and actresses. Reading the book again I could see the series of films exactly but to just watch the story somehow one would miss part of the whole experience of this book. I now consider the 2nd part is heavier in it's message and not as joyful to read. Maybe this is part of it's genius that as life passes that is the way it can be.