Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

Dec 2004 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Ben Miles, Full Cast, and Jamie Bamber

About this audiobook

In 1944 Captain Charles Ryder travels with a company of soldiers to Brideshead. He has been there before, and the great house serves as a potent reminder of the decadent, stylish lifestyle now destroyed by the austerity of the Second World War. Charles' mind travels back twenty years to when he was a student at Oxford, in thrall to the captivating, tragic Sebastian Flyte. This friendship leads to his involvement with Sebastian's aristocratic Catholic family - in particular Julia, the eldest Flyte daughter - and has far-reaching effects on his life. Ben Miles stars as Charles Ryder with Jamie Bamber as Sebastian in this full-cast dramatisation, which also features Eleanor Bron and Edward Petherbridge.

About the author

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead, London, in 1903. He studied History at Hertford College, Oxford, but left without a degree. After a brief period as a teacher, he published his first book, a biography of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in 1928. The same year also saw the publication of his first novel, Decline and Fall, which established his reputation. Further novels, including Vile Bodies (1930), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Brideshead Revisited (1945) were highly acclaimed. Waugh also wrote several travel books and short stories, and was a prolific journalist and book reviewer. Waugh died on Easter Sunday, 1966, at his home in Combe Florey, Somerset.