This novel is another literary classic from Evelyn Waugh. When middle class Charles Ryder meets Sebastian Flyte, he is drawn into the world of the Marchmain family, doomed aristocrats pent up in their home at Brideshead, where they are being slowly destroyed by age and alcohol. Infused with the torpor of post-Second Word War England, Brideshead Revisited is sharply satirical but also haunting and evocative. Perhaps Waugh's greatest work of fiction, it will remain with you long after you've turned the last page

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.