8 Facts You Might Not Have Known About Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’

When Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited was first published in 1945, The New York Times described it as his “finest achievement.” It tells the story of artist Charles Ryder, who is looking back at his complicated past with the aristocratic Marchmain family during the interwar years in England and how his relationships with siblings Sebastian and Julia shaped the course of his life. Brideshead has continued to be one of Waugh’s most renowned works, and its fame was further enhanced by a notable television adaptation in 1981. Eighty years after Brideshead Revisited first hit shelves, here are eight facts about one of the first major novels of the post-Second World War era. 

1. Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited after he injured his leg.
2. It was first published as a serial in a New York-based magazine.
3. The character of Sebastian was inspired by two real people.
4. Brideshead Castle was based on the real country house of Madresfield Court.
5. MGM offered Waugh $140,000 for the film rights. 
6. The fountain at Brideshead was inspired by three sculptures in Rome.
7. Waugh revised the novel in 1960.
8. Luca Guadagnino almost made a TV adaptation of the novel.

Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited after he injured his leg.

In December 1943, Waugh, then 40, was training with the British army when he broke his leg (and hurt his knee) during the landing of a parachute jump. He spent a few weeks in bed before writing to his commanding officer asking for leave without pay, providing a list of reasons that included “I have no longer the physical agility necessary for an operational officer in the kind of operations for which I have been trained” and “In civil life I am a novelist and I have now formed the plan of a new novel which will take approximately three months to write.”

He made the case that while the novel wouldn’t be about the war, “it may cause innocent amusement and relaxation to a number of readers and it is understood that entertainment is now regarded as a legitimate contribution to the war effort,” adding “once an idea becomes fully formed in the author's mind, it cannot be left unexploited without deterioration. If, in fact, the book is not written now it will never be written.” Waugh was granted his leave and promptly wrote Brideshead Revisited. 

It was first published as a serial in a New York-based magazine.

It’s often forgotten that Brideshead wasn’t initially a novel, but began as a magazine serialization—and despite its English setting, its first appearance was actually in Town & Country, which was based in New York. (There was no serialization of the book in the UK.) Town & Country began publishing Brideshead Revisited in November 1944 and finished in February 1945, but only part of the text was included; it’s been estimated that almost half of the total length of the story that would eventually appear in novel form was cut for the purposes of the serialization.

The character of Sebastian was inspired by two real people.

Brideshead Revisited has three parts, the first of which revolves around Charles’s relationship with Sebastian Flyte. Charles meets the charming young man while they’re students at the University of Oxford, and Sebastian sweeps him up into his glamorous world.

The character was drawn from two of Waugh’s close friends during his time at the University of Oxford: one was Hugh Lygon, the son of an aristocratic family, who was rumored (but not confirmed) to have had a romantic relationship with Waugh; the other was Alistair Graham, who became Waugh’s lover and is mentioned in his memoir A Little Learning. Waugh gave him the pseudonym Hamish Lennox and described him as “the friend of my heart.” Both Lygon and Graham had notable things in common with Sebastian: In addition to being from wealthy backgrounds, they were both Catholic; both also had problems with alcoholism, a factor that leads to Sebastian’s decline in the novel.

A third person who some say also served as inspiration for Sebastian was Waugh’s friend Henry Talbot de Vere Clifton, most commonly known as Harry. He, like Sebastian, was educated at Oxford and from a wealthy aristocratic background. Waugh also visited at the Clifton family’s stately home. 

Brideshead Castle was based on the real country house of Madresfield Court.

Brideshead as a place is often closely associated with Castle Howard, the stately home that was used as a stand-in in both the 1981 TV series and the 2008 feature film adaptation. But Waugh had another real-life location in mind when he conceived the Marchmain’s family home: Madresfield Court, the home of Hugh Lygon and his family.

Waugh also used Lygon's parents, Lord and Lady Beauchamp, and his sisters as inspiration for the Marchmains: Lord and Lady Beauchamp’s separation, the departure of Lord Beauchamp for continental Europe, and the subsequently frosty relationship between Lady Beauchamp and her children among the elements that Waugh drew upon for the Marchmain family in the novel.

MGM offered Waugh $140,000 for the film rights. 

Following the publication of the novel, Waugh was approached by the film studio MGM, which was interested in adapting the novel for the screen and proposed to pay $140,000 for the rights. In 1947, Waugh traveled to California to discuss the deal in more detail (although he was just as interested in the prospect of an all-expenses-paid vacation “with a minimum of work of any kind” as he was in talking about a potential film). But he was disappointed to discover that MGM saw Brideshead “purely as a love story” and not in terms of its religious themes. In a detailed memo setting out his intentions for the book and how he thought it should be realized on screen, he wrote:

“The theme is theological. It is in no sense abstruse and is based on principles that have for nearly 2,000 years been understood by millions of simple people, and are still so understood. But it is, I think, the first time that an attempt will have been made to introduce them to the screen, and they are antithetical to much of the current philosophy of Hollywood.”

Ultimately, this potential MGM film was never made.

A couple of years after MGM approached Waugh, novelist Graham Greene signed on to write the screenplay of a different adaptation of Brideshead. Like Waugh, Greene had also converted to Catholicism later in life, and had explored Catholic themes in some of his books, including Brighton Rock and The Power and the Glory. Waugh was very pleased at the idea of him adapting the novel—he even wrote to tell him so. But this potential adaptation never came to fruition either.

The fountain at Brideshead was inspired by three sculptures in Rome.

Waugh had very specific ideas about the appearance of the fountain at Brideshead Castle, which becomes a crucial location in the novel. In his memo about a potential film adaptation, Waugh stated that the appearance of the fountain should be drawn from three sculptures: the fountain of the Piazza Navona and the elephant and obelisk in the Piazza Minerva—both designed by the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini—and the Trevi Fountain. (Waugh believed the latter was also a Bernini work, but it was actually designed by Nicola Salvi and finished by Giuseppe Pannini.) Waugh’s vision for the fictional fountain was that it had been brought directly from Italy, and for him it was intended to symbolize the family’s “worldly 18th-century splendor.” 

Waugh revised the novel in 1960.

The version of Brideshead Revisited most commonly published today isn’t the 1945 version (although it can still be found online), but a revised version published 15 years later.

Brideshead had received praise when it was first published, but the critical reception hadn’t been unanimously positive, and as the years went by, Waugh began to have more and more reservations about the book. In 1950, he said in a letter to Nancy Mitford that “all that those nasty critics said was bang right” and decided to rewrite sections of the book. In his revision, he moderated some of the book’s nostalgia and “rhetorical and ornamental language,” among other things, and acknowledged that the novel was now “a souvenir of the Second War rather than that of the ’twenties or of the ’thirties, with which it ostensibly deals.”

Waugh wasn’t the only author to edit his book post-publication; the likes of Mary Shelley and Henry James did the same. 

Luca Guadagnino almost made a TV adaptation of the novel.

While the 1981 dramatization of Brideshead Revisited is well known, in recent years, another TV adaptation by the Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers) was in the works. He had co-written scripts with writer Benjamin Walters for the project, which would have been broadcast by the BBC—but it ultimately stalled due to difficulties in securing financing. In the proposed adaptation, Lord and Lady Marchmain would have been played by Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett, with Harry Lawtey as Sebastian, Rooney Mara as Julia, and Andrew Garfield as the protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder.

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