- 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 Marchmain family 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 recgonize his spiritual and social distance from them.