Brideshead Revisited De Warme Winkel

While this masterpiece enjoyed cult status among queers and conservatives in the last century, today this novel seems to be consigned to oblivion. While this is perhaps the most romantic and Anglophile book that literature has ever produced.

Evelyn Waugh's secretly autobiographical Brideshead Revisited (1945) tells the story of Charles Ryder, who, as a young student at Oxford in the early 20th century, falls under the spell of the aristocratic Flyte family. For a sultry summer he enjoys their luxurious life on the paradisiacal family estate, where he falls in love with both son Sebastian and daughter Julia Flyte.

But with the end of summer and the rise of fascism, adult life arrives. As much as Charles would like to, the freedom of those golden August days will never return. What seemed like the prelude to a radically honest and free-thinking life turns out to be the beginning of a hopeless and cynical existence.

Stuck in a bitter worldview herself, writing this novel was an attempt for Evelyn Waugh to recapture the happiness of his younger years. Inspired by this self-examination, De Warme Winkel uses Brideshead Revisited as a vehicle for an autopsy of love and an unfolding of our (sexual) identity. With live music composed by Rik Elstgeest and the memories and fantasies of Florian and Abke as the beating heart, they finally resuscitate the epic love story that Waugh so longed for.

Brideshead Revisited premiered at the Holland Festival in June 2023 and was sold out for a month in the main hall of theater breeding ground De Sloot. At everyone's request, the performance is now traveling through the Netherlands and Belgium.