I have developed this so that it is not only my own thoughts. Please email me with yours!

I found Brideshead Revisited to be a chraming story, and I thought I'd tell you my opinion of it. If you have an opinion on the book or TV adaptation, please email me.

So here are my thoughts on Brideshead, short though they are.

The first time I saw Brideshead Revisited was when it was repeated on Channel 4 (British TV) in 1998. I was immediately taken with the love and possessiveness which ran through it. The "charm" as Anthony Blanche so rightly puts it oozes out from every corner.
At first, the story was confusing. I felt it unresolved - what happened to Sebastian after the news Cordelia brought? How could such a central character simply fade into the background?
I thought about the way Julia became a substitute for Sebastian in Charles eyes. It didn't strike me until the end that it was the opposite way round - that Sebastian had simply been a substitute for Julia until Charles met her.

I can't quite say why the story made me feel the way it did, but it certainly had a large impact on the way I look at life and love.

Thoughts of Min-Pyng Chen

I'd just have to say that the TV adaptation was done really well...every aspect of it, from the casting (anthony and jeremy were so cute) to the visual imagery, which was so divine. I don't think that there could be another adaptation that meets the standards of this one and only.

Thoughts of Barbara

The theme that I loved the most in the book was Charles' search for faith, which he finds in the end.

Thoughts of Jospeh Johnston

Like you I was puzzled as to how Sebastian simply faded into the background ...

I have read the book about half a dozen times (including in Italian - "Ritorno a Bridehead") and I have decided that this is a genuine structural weakness in the novel. It's as if Waugh had forgotten about Sebastian when the narrative turned to the menage a trois of Rex, Julia and of course Charles.

Waugh's description of Sebastian's death is curiously sentimental in the way that the Irish rather than the English would understand - reverence for the drunk etc ...

It had never occured to me that Sebastian was a substitute for Julia or vice versa. It is arguable that everything/everyone that is beautiful within the novel is a substitute for the red tabernacle light which radiates the last page.

It is my view that Evelyn Waugh was in love with the idea of being a good Catholic and could not understand how anyone could want to be anything else. In a similar way the novel tries to be about love but ends up where it begins: a man infatuated with beauty. The final beauty being the truth of the Catholic faith and the real presence of Christ in the blessed sacrament.

It is unquestionably a masterpiece of a novel perhaps a flawed one but a masterpiece neverthless.

Thankyou for reading :)

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