Brideshead meets Broadland

Of all the great books written over the tumultuous twentieth century, one novel looms large in the romantic imagination. Brideshead Revisited, published in 1945 is a story of interwoven passion and pleasure, decadence and conflict ~ centred around the Flyte family. Every work of fiction has some basis of fact ~ Evelyn Waugh's Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is said to be partly autobiographical.

During the heady decade of the 1920s, Evelyn Waugh was an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford. At this time it was de rigueur for students to venture to Broadland and go yachting. Summer holidays on the water usually involved a choice attire of cream flannels and sweaters, blazers and straw hats ~ with possibly a teddy bear in tow.

While at Oxford, Waugh as one of the 'bright young things' met Hugh, a member of the colourful Lygon family, whose seat was the gloriously gothic Madresfield Court, near Malvern in Worcestershire. The large Lygon family and Waugh's extended network of friends at Oxford is almost certainly the real life inspiration for the Brideshead novel, penned in maturity over twenty years later.

Sadly, events were soon to spiral out of control for the Lygons in 1931. Political rivalries and personal grudges fuelled by the media of the day conspired to topple the head of the family, Liberal statesman William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, who was ruthlessly exposed as a homosexual.

William, Viscount Emley, became the 8th Earl upon the death of his father in 1938. William Lygon served as a Member of Parliament for East Norfolk and made an unusual, bohemian residence at the converted Winterton on Sea lighthouse. Today, isolated in distant fens down the Norwich River (Yare), the Beauchamp Arms public house (previously Ferry House) is now one of the very few reminders of William Lygon's connection with Broadland and legendary Brideshead.

The Brideshead novel is perfectly visualised in the television adaptation made by Granada in 1981, with soaring music of brass and woodwind by Geoffrey Burgon. Castle Howard, the Baroque palace rising up from rolling hills in North Yorkshire was used in filming both the television serial and later film and is now synonymous with Brideshead and beauty.

Chris

“It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.”

Charles Ryder to Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited, 1945